The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) said the blockade next Saturday would be the beginning of a sustained action against Mugabe, who was last week elected for another five-year term in a presidential run-off vote in which he was the sole candidate after opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai pulled out.
COSATU is mobilising its members, civil society and Zimbabweans living in South Africa in solidarity with our fellow trade unions and the people of Zimbabwe, beginning with a demonstration and border blockade at the Beitbridge border post, on Saturday 5 July 2008, the labour union said in a statement.
The union also urged unions and workers across the world to refuse to serve Mugabe in an attempt to bring pressure to bear personally on the 84-year old Zimbabwean leader who has ruled his country since independence from Britain in 1980.
COSATU last April mobilised South African workers to refuse to unload arms from a Chinese ship that were destined for Mugabe’s government. Beijing later recalled the weapons-bearing ship after other maritime governments in southern Africa refused at the instigation of COSATU and the international community to allow the vessel to dock at their ports.
We are calling on all our unions and those around the world to make sure that they never ever serve Mugabe anywhere, including at airports, restaurants, shops, etc. Further, we call on all workers and citizens of the world never to allow Mugabe to set foot in their countries, COSATU said.
The South African union spoke as it emerged that Mugabe, top military commander Constantine Chiwenga and Zimbabwe central bank chief Gideon Gono were among senior officials of the Harare government to face United Nations targeted sanctions under a United States-drafted sanctions resolution.
The US is current chair of the United Nations (UN) Security Council and is pushing the council to take tougher measures, including slapping sanctions against Mugabe’s government for going ahead with the June 27 run-off election.
African leaders, the Security Council and Western nations had urged Mugabe to call off the election, saying widespread political violence and gross human rights abuses in Zimbabwe made a free and fair vote impossible.
Tsvangirai pulled out of the vote saying he could not participate in the election after political violence killed at least 86 of his supporters and displaced 200 000 others.
Mugabe however pressed on with the vote, winning by a landslide margin as the only candidate and was sworn in last Sunday for another five-year term that will take his rule to more than three decades.
Several African observers, including the African Union (AU) observers, condemned the run-off election as undemocratic.
But the AU has resisted calls by Western nations for sanctions against Mugabe and instead used its just-ended summit in Egypt to urge the Zimbabwean leader to open negotiations with the opposition for a government of national unity.
Earlier on Tuesday, Tsvangirai rejected calls by the AU to form a government of national unity with Mugabe saying such a government would not end Zimbabwe’s political and economic crisis.Â
The US is expected to push the Security Council to debate Zimbabwe’s crisis but council permanent members Russia and China that are friendly to Mugabe are expected to block sanctions against the Zimbabwean leader.
South Africa, which is not a permanent member of the council, is also expected to oppose any drastic action being taken against its troubled northern neighbour.
Zimbabwe, once a regional breadbasket, is in the grip of a severe economic crisis which critics blame on wrong polices by Mugabe such as his haphazard fast-track land reform exercise that displaced established white commercial farmers and replaced them with either incompetent or inadequately funded black farmers.
The economic crisis that the World Bank has described as the worst in the world outside a war zone is seen in the world’s highest inflation rate that analysts estimate at more than 2 000 000 percent, severe shortages of food and every basic survival commodity. – ZimOnline
Post published in: News