Powerful COSATU call to isolate Mugabe
The South African trade union centre - COSATU - has called on international labour organisations to work towards the total isolation of the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe.
This follows the attacks on opposition supporters and the disruption of their campaign that forced MDC President Morgan Tsvangirai to pull out of Friday’s re-run presidential election.
Meanwhile, the trial of two leading members of the Zimbabwe trade union centre - ZCTU - on charges of “communicating falsehoods” have been delayed by a week.
When Lovemore Matombo and Wellington Chibebe turned up for their hearing in Harare Magistrates Court there was no magistrate or state prosecutor present. The next hearing will be on 30 June.
Unions from across southern Africa and further afield have protested to Zimbabwe embassies over the trial of the two union leaders.
COSATU issued a statement calling on leaders among Zimbabwe’s neighbours to “withdraw their recognition of a ‘government’ that has no mandate to rule following their defeat (in the first round of the elections) but is clinging to power by brute force”.
The United Nations Security Council also condemned the Mugabe government’s campaign of violence against the opposition and called on him to scrap Friday’s poll.
The Movement for Democratic Change has now formally pulled out of the Presidential re-run – to avoid further bloodshed.
The MDC estimate that 3,000 militia bases around the country had been set up by the Zimbabwe authorities to stop the opposition’s campaign with beatings, killings and intimidation. The MDC was also denied media coverage.
It’s thought that 200,000 people in Zimbabwe have been displaced by the violent campaign to deny democracy.
The Financial Times reports of the “dangerous limbo” of many Zimbabweans who left their country’s collapsing economy and increasing state violence for South Africa. Many were planning to return to Zimbabwe because of the recent riots in South Africa against the presence of one and a half to three million Zimbabweans who migrated there since 2005.