Zimbabwe unions call two-day general strike

Zimbabwe's trade unions have called a two-day national strike from this morning, ostensibly over the plummeting value of wages under rampant inflation that has left many people unable to afford the bus fare to work.

But many Zimbabweans view the strike as a demand for an end to Robert Mugabe's 27-year rule. Previous attempts to call a strike have flopped, in part because of intimidation by the police and army, but also because almost anyone with a job in a country with 80% unemployment is desperate to hang on to it.

Mugabe holds on still, after the other African leaders, once again, refused to condemn him. The people who will take to the streets of Zimbabwe in the national strike will come from the 80% of the population who are unemployed. Those who have jobs will hardly take the risk of losing them, which means the strike is of symbolic value only.

That is why the voices of other African leaders is needed here and it is why Mbeki's silence is such an abdication of responsibility.

Zimbabweans appear to be waiting for the opposition to remove Mugabe for them, whilst Tsvangirai is waiting for the people to rise up so that he can assume power.

"People are angry but they are passive. There is trouble here and there, but they are not ready to go out and die for the cause. I think they are looking for others to do it for them. They want Mugabe to go, but it's hard to get them mobilised," he said.

"I'm not one of those who believes Mr Mugabe's fall is imminent," said the leader of one prominent civic protest group, Mike Davis of the Harare Combined Residents Association. "It will probably come from a mix of pressures, but I don't think we can expect mass street protests to be a factor until his last days. It will be other internal pressures, particularly the economy, that will bring him down, when he runs out of money to spread his patronage and those in Zanu-PF realise they are going to lose everything."

Many of us had hoped that, when Mugabe faced other African leaders last week, that they would have denounced his harsh methods of governing. Instead, he was able to leave the meeting proclaiming success because his neighbours pronounced his rule legitimate and blamed Britain and its allies for Zimbabwe's problems.

The cowardice of Africa's leadership was highlighted yesterday when a group of Catholic bishops denounced Mugabe's actions and compared the struggle against him with the struggle against white rule. Were Zimbabwe's neighbours to issue a similarly harsh denouncement of his brutal methods, it's hard to see how he could continue.

With inflation set to touch 4000% and 80% of the population unemployed, one would think that there is no further for Zimbabwe to fall. Toilet paper in Zimbabwe currently costs $417. And that not for a roll, that's for a single two ply sheet. In the time it's taken me to type this article the cost has probably risen again.

"There's a surrealism here that's hard to get across to people," Mike Davies, the chairman of a civic-watchdog group called the Combined Harare Residents Association, said in an interview. "If you need something and have cash, you buy it. If you have cash you spend it today, because tomorrow it's going to be worth 5 percent less.

And yet, hard as it is to believe, Zimbabwe may fall even further if neighbouring country's are any example.

Citizens of the Democratic Republic of Congo watched the erosion of their nation over three decades until there was hardly a proper road outside a few major cities. The telephone system, hospitals and schools rotted away. Today, most of Congo's population knows little else but the rot.

The same fate may befall Zimbabwe unless there is some kind of intervention. And yet, Bush and Blair, who invaded Iraq supposedly to "liberate" their people from an evil dictator, would never dream of carrying out a similar action to aid the people of Zimbabwe.

Blair would no doubt argue that this is because of Britain's colonial past, an argument that ignores totally our colonial past in the Middle East. No, there's a far more prescient reason as to why we refuse to intervene. The state's exports are mostly coal, asbestos, copper, nickel, gold, platinum and iron ore. Notice anything missing from that list?

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Tags: Mugabe, Zimbabwe, general strike, Africa, South Africa, Mbeki, Tsvangirai, MDC