That the government is not at one with the people – specifically the working class — was illustrated on Thursday during Workers’ Day celebrations at Gwanzura Stadium in Highfield, Harare, when the audience roundly booed off the podium the government official who was reading Labour minister Nicholas Goche’s official speech.
NewsDay Editorial
Could Goche have been pre-warned that the workers were going to give him an icy and hostile reception, and so decided to send the official to the slaughter?
The workers were incensed when the official continually referred to the government’s latest economic blueprint, the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (ZimAsset).
So far, ZimAsset has served as a propagandist tool with nothing linked to it moving on the ground. There has been much talk, but no visibility. To the workers, ZimAsset is pie in the sky like previous similarly-hyped economic blueprints which were launched with much ceremony and pomp only to gather dust on the shelf and replaced by others which also disappeared unceremoniously.
There is a big gap in perception between the government and urbanites who have borne the brunt of Zanu PF’s ruinous policies. To them, ZimAsset is a pie in the sky like many previous and similarly hyped blueprints. They know that most of the top politicians are there to fatten their pockets, not to serve.
So, the workers’ angry response was understandable. What they wanted to hear was practical steps being taken to alleviate their plight, not high-sounding words which do not take into account the urgency of the matter. When does urgent mean urgent to the government?
These many and varied grievances need a calm and considered response, not a forceful one. A democratically responsive government would pre-empt this by addressing these valid grievances; not cynically accuse of subversion and treason anyone exercising their right to demonstrate as the government routinely does. The government itself, more than ever, needs to be calm, collected, attentive and focused, instead of politicking by ridiculing the workers as sponsored hooligans stooges and puppets.
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The call for mass action by MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai aside, resorting to protests, would not ordinarily be mistaken for or distorted to mean a call to arms in a functioning democracy where free expression is taken for granted.
It would not be out of place in a country like Zimbabwe with an unemployment rate of 85%; in a country with endemic corruption at the very top; in a country where all who are well-connected politically can get away with anything; in a country where infrastructure has crumbled; in a country where the Head of State professes ignorance of this decay like President Robert Mugabe last week expressed horror at the state of the roads. Those in power don’t want to know this or care. But there is not much of a workforce left.
A drive around the once-bustling industrial areas of Harare and other towns and cities paints a sad, gloomy picture with many factories abandoned altogether.
Torwood and Zvishavane now resemble ghost towns. Any mass action would be most difficult to organise successfully. Without significant numbers, the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) has no leverage to push the government into action.
But the government should use this as a window of opportunity to mend its disastrously erroneous ways because if it does not, things will go from bad to catastrophic — and there won’t be anyone to negotiate with if fed-up people go into the streets on their own.
They should heed and negotiate with the ZCTU and business as legitimate partners in the true spirit of tripartitism where there is no first among equals. That is the foundation of sustainable transformation, because all voices must be heard instead of the lone voice of government in ZimAsset. It is time to revive the Tripartite Negotiating Forum.
