UK / FILE: Leading Zimbabwean trade unionist pledges to keep on fighting Mugabe regime

Record ID: 455970

  • Title: UK / FILE: Leading Zimbabwean trade unionist pledges to keep on fighting Mugabe regime
  • Date: 6th August 2007
  • Summary: (AD1) HARARE, ZIMBABWE, (RECENT - JULY 24, 2007) (REUTERS) PRESIDENTIAL MOTORCADE ZIMBABWE PRESIDENT ROBERT MUGABE GETTING OUT OF CAR VARIOUS OF MUGABE WATCHING PRESIDENTIAL SALUTE VARIOUS OF MUGABE WALKING PAST GUARD OF HONOUR
  • Embargoed: 21st August 2007 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA8YOP8QT92R2YFB5KRJXOGT44E
  • Story Text: With inflation running at an estimated 4,500 per cent and rising, Zimbabwe's economy has been crippled by acute food, fuel and water shortages.
    President Robert Mugabe's decision last month to force shops to slash prices by half resulted in a nation-wide stampede for goods, leaving most supermarket shelves bare.
    Lucia Matibenga, first vice president of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, is an outspoken critic of the Mugabe regime. Speaking in London last week Matibenga said the country's embattled trade unions would continue to bring to light the conditions of their workers despite her fears of attack by the Zimbabwean police.
    She said: "We are not happy with the economic situation in our country. We are not happy with the lack of democratic space in our country and we are not happy in general with the poverty that our members are being subjected to, so we will continue to do our work in order to raise awareness among our members to challenge the authorities to govern us properly."
    Matibenga, who is also National Chairperson of the Women's Assembly for Zimbabwe's opposition party Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), said that women were bearing the brunt of the country's economic collapse. She said: "They are most affected in that even partnered or not partnered the responsibility of getting food on the table rests with the women. They watch the children, you know, asking for food, asking for medication when they fall sick and they go, they are the ones who go to hospital and find there is no medication in the hospital."
    She said that there was also an alarming fall in children attending school in Zimbabwe. ""We have also begun to notice a lot of drop-outs among children of school going age because the parents can't afford because the cost of everything has forever been rising ever since the beginning of the crisis some seven or eight years ago," she said.
    In September 2006 Matibenga was among a group of trade unionists badly injured when a ZCTU demonstration in Harare was broken up by police. More than 250 demonstrators were arrested. She explained: "I think you can see that my two hands are different because I broke my arm in three places because I was trying to protect myself, and then in the process a truncheon hit me."
    Prices in Zimbabwe could be 1,000 times higher at the end of this year than they were at the beginning, International Monetary Fund (IMF) Africa director Abdoulaye Bio-Tchane said last week.
    Critics blame the policies of President Robert Mugabe, including the seizure of thousands of white-owned farms.
    Zimbabwe's central bank announced it would issue new, higher denominated bank notes last Wednesday (July 31) to help consumers cope with hyper-inflation.
    Mubage, 83, has remained defiant despite the growing crisis, accusing opponents and Western powers of plotting to oust him.
    Matibenga pledges to continue fighting against Mugabe's regime which she said had branded the ZCTU "public enemy number one." She said: "The Zimbabwean Congress of Trade Unions is enemy number one. But for us really that's what it should be. We are a watchdog for rights for our members and if we were to be praised by the system it would be such an anomaly because then that would be far totally divorced from the work that we are supposed to do."
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