Zimbabwe

A new opposition in Zimbabwe

On 8-9 February 2008, over 3,000 delegates from fifty civic groups, social movements, trade unions and the revolutionary left gathered in Harare. The delegates, including 300 from the International Socialist Organisation and its allies, were at a convention entitled: “Reclaiming Our Future, Deciding Zimbabwe’s Destiny.” The People’s Convention was following up the All-Stakeholders Conference held in Bulawayo on 29 September 2007 which had rejected the secretive and exclusive Mbeki-mediated talks on Zimbabwe’s future. A National Task Force was set up to meet the Movement for Democratic Change...

WOZA defiant against threats

At four in the morning on 24 August, Zimbabwean police carried out a raid on the homes of Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) members in Bulawayo, taking six women and a one year-old baby into custody. This came just a week after WOZA’s “Sheroes” gathering, a conference held in secret in the face of Mugabe’s police state, under the tagline “beaten, jailed but still determined to be free”. Smashing down gates and doors, the police seized the feminist activists from their homes and drove them to the bush around Khami Ruins, some 40 km outside Bulawayo, telling them that it was the last time they...

Mugabe’s despotism spirals to collapse - Support the workers in Zimbabwe!

by Sacha Ismail On Tuesday 3 April, trucks of riot police drove through the Zimbabwean capital Harare, and military helicopters hovered over workers’ districts, as a two day general strike called by the Zimbabwean Congress of Trade Unions over wage rises and price increases — and against Robert Mugabe’s increasingly dictatorial regime — began. Soldiers with automatic weapons were posted at the intersections of the city's main industrial area. The strike, and the regime’s show of force against it, are the latest episode in the raging class struggle that has engulfed Zimbabwe since Mugabe’s...

Strike wave in Zimbabwe

By Jack Staunton On 5 February teachers across Zimbabwe began an indefinite general strike for pay and conditions, joining doctors and nurses already taking action against poverty pay. With inflation now reported to be running at 1,593% (the worst in the world), dictator Robert Mugabe is keeping public sector workers’ wages down in order to have enough money to keep his regime afloat. Almost 200,000 public sector workers angry about pay now pose a threat to the regime’s stability. With as many as 80% of Zimbabweans unemployed, the poverty and health situation is dire. But the pay of hard...

Zimbabwean hunger striker dies

from the national coalition of anti-deportation campaigns CAMPAIGNERS have reported that Lizwane Ndlovu, one of the original Zimbabwean detainees at Yarl’s Wood who went on hunger strike there over the summer, died last Thursday 10th November 2005. Lizwane Ndlovu is reported to have been not been well since being released from detention at the end of July. Campaigners say that she subsequently fell into a coma, and was hospitalised in Birmingham City Hospital who have confirmed Lizwane died there on Thursday last. We understand that Lizwane leaves two young children in Zimbabwe. Campaigners...

Workers news Round-up

South Africa Hundreds of thousands of workers in South Africa supported a one-day general strike in protest against job losses on 18 May. Three of AngloGold’s Vaal River mines were shut. Most workers were on strike at Harmony Gold’s big mines in the Free State. Two-thirds of the workforce stayed away from the Kloof mine. At the Beatrix mine in the Free State only one out of four shafts was operational. Many members of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa joined the strike. The union targeted Mittal (formerly known as Iscor), Denel, DaimlerChrysler, BMW, Ford and Volkswagen. Two...

The world's poor need solidarity, not empty talk

Campaign forces reprieve for Zimbabwean asylum seekers By Gerry Bates After a big military victory the ancient Romans would allow the victorious general to have a triumphant parade through the streets of the great city. Defeated generals and grandees would march in chains behind the Roman general and his soldiers, to the greater glory of the victor and of Rome. Even the defeated had a part to play in the joyous celebration. And afterwards? After the parade, the captive leaders were taken down to the dark prison cellars, and quietly strangled. The Romans took their maxim, “Woe to the defeated”...

Stop Zimbabwe deportations!

On 14 July, the campaign by over a hundred Zimbabwean asylum-seekers who had gone on hunger strike, plus their supporters, won a victory. The Government has promised not to deport any "failed asylum seekers" to Zimbabwe before 4 August. On that day an appeal is due to be heard in the High Court against the Government's refusal to admit that the risks of harassment, injury, or murder by Robert Mugabe's police which people would face on being deported to Zimbabwe can be valid grounds for a fresh claim for asylum. Determined campaigning can win. But the respite is only brief. Zimbabweans and...

Zimbabwe and the workers’ fight

Sacha Ismail spoke to Briggs Bomba, an activist in the Zimbabwean democracy movement and international coordinator of the Zimbabwe International Socialist Organisation (ISO). What’s the current situation in Zimbabwe? We are in the middle of a severe economic crisis, following the reintroduction of the government’s neoliberal “Economic Structural Adjustment Programme” (ESAP). ESAP began in 1991, but Mugabe retreated in the late 90s when workers, the urban poor, peasants and war veterans rose up against the effects of structural adjustment. The ZANU-PF regime redirected this anger into limited...

Mugabe's new rule?

Two socialists comment on the Zimbabwean elections which take place on 31 March Brian Stephens, Green Left Weekly, Harare Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s ruling party — the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) — is confident of victory in the country’s general elections. Mugabe is now looking ahead to regaining the confidence of international capital and attracting new investment to revitalise a devastated economy. As cleaner elections would help to legitimise Mugabe’s rule, the electoral laws have been liberalised, access to the state media has been relaxed and the...

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