THE LABOUR MOVEMENT
Although the youth have the energy and time for political discussion, they do not have the strength in production of the employed workers.
The question which is on the mind of all genuine strugglers is how the great potential of the workers for resistance to the compromisers and the capitalists can be realised.
During the struggle for independence the trade union leaders mobilised no challenge to the Smith regime or the bosses. Most were passive collaborators, not merely with capitalism, but also on the question of majority rule.
Hence the unions stagnated, and the workers were forced into the background by the petty-bourgeois nationalists.
After independence, while the union leadership eagerly fell over themselves in praise of compromise with capitalism, there was a spontaneous movement of workers—taking advantage of the black government to strike against the capitalists for a living wage.
This movement was not sustained because the workers looked to the ZANU(PF) leadership, rather than to their own powers to achieve their demands. Eventually these ‘socialist’ leaders used the police and the army to break the movement. Many strikers were dismissed after Kangai, the then Minister of Labour, threatened them with the whip.
The union leaders dissociated themselves from this strike movement. Instead of supporting the workers’ demands they attached themselves to the Department of Labour and pleaded with officials to attend their gatherings.
Despite the lack of leadership the strikes notched up many achievements—a national minimum wage, state regulation over dismissals, and the election of workers’ committees which arose during the strike wave (but became regulated by the government as an alternative to strikes).
Ebb and revival
Through the period of recession from 1982 to 1984 there were virtually no strikes, and the union leaders did not resist redundancies and factory closures. Where struggles against redundancies did take place these were under the leadership of the workers’ committees.
These committees, under greater democratic control by the workers, have been a source of resistance to the corruption of the leaders. But inevitably, even the best of the workers’ committees have been forced to recognise their limitations.
Restricted to the factory they cannot make changes to the disgraceful Industrial Council agreements made by the union bureaucrats with the capitalists against the workers’ interests.
In the face of these difficulties many workers’ committees have been isolated, demoralised and forced to retreat. But it is to these committees that the workers will first turn to fight the exploitation of the capitalists and the control of the state bureaucracy.
There has been considerable industrial action since the elections. The workers have made use of the contradictory statements of the politicians. After Mugabe’s post-election anti-Smith speech there were some strikes against racist management (with 2,000 demonstrators at Mashava Mine on 20 July 1985).
The dispute over the agro-industrial wage showed the enormous potential for struggle existing within even isolated sections of the working class. After the government announced an increase in the minimum wage to $143.75 a month a furious resistance was mounted by the capitalists. This resistance was met by strikes and disputes throughout forests, plantations and estates as the workers insisted on the full increase.
At the Muteyo Forestry Commission 150 workers struck early in August, at Mazowe more than 1,000 later in August, and about 4,000 in Manicaland tea estates early in October.
When the government was faced by this movement it dithered, making one contradictory statement after another.
Other struggles show the potentially explosive situation in manufacturing, which has not benefitted as much as other sectors from the upturn.
In protest against redundancies, the workers of Springmaster, the largest furniture company in Zimbabwe, seized control of three factories early in October. The workers’ committee appealed to the government to take over the company, and commandeered the company cars. But with no support from the trade unions and other factories, the redundancies were eventually carried out.
In Brockhouse, an engineering company, there has been a protracted fight to save jobs. Towards the end of 1985, after a year of struggle, the workers succeeded in saving the factory by demanding the government take it over. Usually the government has simply advised workers to form a cooperative with no guarantee of state support.
These struggles have been essentially defensive. But the mood of the workers in industry is definitely hardening after decades of exploitation and arbitrary management.
The present struggles, important as they are are designed to put pressure on the government. The mass of workers have yet to understand that their class demands cannot be met by their party leaders in a compromise with capitalism.
But movements such as these will strengthen the workers’ committees and the desire to link up with other factories.
They are the foretaste of much bigger industrial battles to come, against dismissals and redundancies, for higher wages, pension rights, etc.
Simultaneously, it is entirely possible that non-industrial forms of working-class resistance will break out, such as bus boycotts, community action against lack of housing, rent strikes, etc. These will cut across factory divisions and combine many of the grievances of women and workers.
Unlikely as it may seem at present, there will eventually be the growth of mass opposition to the compromise with capitalism and to state control over the trade unions.
The trade unions
A labour movement characterised by democratic discussion and decision-making, with perspectives independent from the government, has not been allowed to develop in Zimbabwe.
The trade unions are still suffering from a bad hangover after the liberation struggle. Having contributed nothing to the victory over white reaction, the union leadership now finds itself the pawn of the present government. At the same time it stands discredited in the eyes of the workers became it does not support their struggles.
This crisis in the unions is the result or two main factors. On the one hand the policies of guerilla struggle belittled the role of the working class; and on the other hand the union leadership provided no way forward.
Many workers gave material support to the guerillas, but this only emphasised their feelings of insignificance in contrast with the fighting guerilla youth. Having no faith in the working class, the guerilla leadership made no calls for unions fighting around bold economic and political demands, let alone preparing the workers for an armed seizure of power in the towns.
The timid and bureaucratic leadership of the unions often were the pawns of the ICFTU and other pro-capitalist agencies. They split again and again in the face of the challenge of UDI and capitalist reaction.
Despite the burden of this leadership, there were important struggles by the workers in the factories and townships against the Smith regime, which show the potential for a worker-led opposition.
It is basically the same leadership (with the exception of the best elements, who were detained, removed or murdered) which is occupying the seats of power today. More than ever they are now under state control and free from control by their members.
An independent rank and file movement has been hindered in its development by the general demoralisation in the unions. The fighters for union democracy and socialist policies find the workers are sceptical that the unions can be changed.
This attitude is based on their experience of the corrupt union bureaucracies. They are also aware that this corruption has been tolerated by the state.
Large sectors of the working class have much deeper hopes and illusions in the nationalist leadership than in the pathetic union officials. Having no experience of a fighting union, many workers regard the present unions, at best, as pro-employer benefit funds with corrupt officials.
Where else could you find a situation where militant workers are proud to say they have resigned from their union?
State control
Soon after independence the ZANU(PF) leadership made every effort to convert the existing trade unions, which were not of its making, into loyal party structures. The party leadership did not want to allow any potential source of opposition to its domination to remain. Although it appeared to have a radical stance, this leadership firmly opposed strikes and sought co-operation with employers in breaking the old leadership.
Workers’ committees directly linked to the party apparatus were encouraged in opposition to the existing leadership. Party factions were formed in the unions to take over the union offices, often with the co-operation of the employers.
Direct state intervention in the trade union field became obvious with the removal of the secretary of the textile union, Phineas Sithole—and the installation of Albert Mugabe, the brother of the Prime Minister, to lead the officially-sponsored ZCTU!
Phineas Sithole had earned a radical reputation in the period of Smith for fighting against ICTFU domination of the trade unions. But this reputation of trade union militancy was fatally compromised by his political support for ZANU(Sithole)—which participated in the Muzorewa government—and it was this that paved the way for his removal.
The new leaders, however, did not come from the ranks of the working class, The opposition to Phineas Sithole in the textile industry after independence, for example, was led by Soko, a management official of the notorious multinational, Lonrho!
This internal opposition was finally able to win only with the mobilisation of the Department of Labour and the police. This union, which had well-developed democratic structures, was virtually absorbed into the Department of Labour.
On the basis of class-collaboration — opposition to strikes and appeals for workers to ‘work hard for the capitalists’ — the ZANU(PF)-approved officials found they were often unable to displace the old leaders. Why should the workers fight for leaders based on a “new” brand of collaboration?
Where attempts to defeat the old leaders failed, the ZANU(PF) leadership either formed splinter unions based on the political support among workers for the party, or eventually made peace with the old collaborators.
The splinter unions had apparently radical policies and practices, but in reality were based fundamentally on support from the Department of Labour.
These supposedly ‘radical’ splinter unions followed the terrible traditions of splits in the past. The end result is that there are now, for example, at least 11 different unions in the food industry!
With few exceptions, the splinters failed to grow or win the leadership in industry. They failed because of the policies or collaboration with the bosses carried out by the ZANU(PF) tops and implemented by the Department of Labour.
The disunity and lack of leadership by trade union officials resulted in stagnation in the trade unions even during the strike movement of 1980-81. Workers were often attracted to a ‘radical’ splinter union for a while, only to become disillusioned and then return to their own union or lapse into complete inactivity.
Now—faced with many fragmented unions without any credibility—the government is changing its policy.
For a period the government followed a policy of divide and rule, favouring sometimes the ‘radical’ splinter, at other times the registered and longer-established unions.
But the general trend in policy now is in favour of the old rogues, as was shown by the detention of workers campaigning for socialist policies in the engineering union. Complete state support is being given to the old discredited leadership of the past.
These changes have been brought about by the disgrace of the ZCTU leaders and by the fact that workers can no longer distinguish between the old and new policies of collaboration.
The ZCTU leaders who had been promoted to positions of authority for their subservience to ZANU(PF) and collaboration with the employers, proceeded to enrich themselves. These people vied for the most abject expressions of loyalty to the party, to which many were late-comers.
Corruption
Union funds were looted, friends and relatives brought to hotel ‘seminars’ and sent abroad on trips, and gifts and funds received from unions internationally disappeared. Critics of this debauchery were removed from the leadership and damned as opponents of the government.
Eventually the government found that all credibility of these ZCTU officials was being lost. Just as Mugabe had had to get rid of the discredited Minister of Labour Kangai, so this trade union leadership was finally denounced by the new Minister of Labour, Shava. After a lengthy process of bureaucratic manoeuvre, during which the same Shava initially refused to accept their being dismissed, they were replaced.
A recent government report has confirmed what the Marxists had been arguing all along: that the unions are bureaucratic shells with a leadership under no democratic control by their members.
“The survey revealed a shocking state of affairs in some unions”, the authors wrote, pointing out that some union bosses “make no regular financial reports while in other unions the leadership deviates from constitutional requirements in order to serve private ends”. (Herald, 16 August 1985)
ln plain language this means that the leadership is milking union funds for their own houses, cars, clothes, relatives, etc. Yet for the crime of pointing out these facts in the engineering union and campaigning for socialist policies, Marxists in Zimbabwe suffered detention and torture.
The whole strategy of the government is to make use of such surveys to ‘restructure’ the bureaucracies by even further state control. By intervening, the government is trying with one hand to make the unions more acceptable to the workers who want nothing to do with them. But with the other hand it is repressing all movements of the workers for union democracy and socialism.
‘Reform’ from above?
The government now declares itself against all splits and for a policy of one union per industry. But this is not part of a policy to put the control of the unions in the hands of the members, but a policy to integrate the unions more securely with the state.
It puts forward this position, not to assist the unification of the workers in the struggle for a living wage, jobs, and decent working conditions, but in order to control the unions more efficiently from above.
These policies are a result not only of the ideas of the ZANU(PF) leaders, but of the objective demands of capitalism. “Monopoly capitalism is less and less willing to reconcile itself to the independence of trade unions”, Trotsky wrote in 1940.
“It demands of the reformist bureaucracy and the labour aristocracy, who pick up the crumbs from its banquet table, that they become transformed into its political police before the eyes of the working class.”
It is this trend, shown most graphically in the colonial world, which has drawn the trade union bureaucracies together with state powers.
But this intervention by the ZANU(PF) government to ‘reform’ the trade union bureaucracy from above cannot achieve even the formal unity of the existing bureaucracies.
The disunity of the trade unions cannot be solved by bureaucratic means which deny democratic control to the membership.
Only a leadership basing itself on the struggle of the workers against the capitalist bosses, and armed with a socialist program for union democracy, a living wage, etc., can win the genuine agreement of workers to unite in one trade unions.
Thus, the state-managed clean-up of the ZCTU and the 1985 ZCTU Congress has not heralded any real change in policies, but only a less openly corrupt and more efficient leadership.
Mutandare, leader of the mining union, is now the undisputed strong man of the ZCTU, but has made it abundantly dear that he is not prepared to challenge the government in any real way. In the future, however, there could be some conflict between the ZANU(PF) leadership and the union leadership over questions such as wage increases and price controls.
But, despite all this, there have been some changes in the unions. The ousting of the ‘gang of four’ from the ZCTU leadership (Makwarimba, Soko, Kupfuma, and Mashavira) has shown that unpopular leaders can be removed, even if campaigns for union democracy are suppressed.
Two leading lights of the ‘gang of four’ are now in trouble with their own unions. Soko has been dismissed at the textile union’s congress, and Makwarimba of the commercial workers’ union is facing a revolt in Gweru. Even though these developments are undoubtedly a result of bureaucratic rivalry as well as the disgust of the workers, some change is in the air.
Apart from the manoeuvring at the top there is also evidence of rank and file revolt.
By throwing the NEWU (National Engineering Workers Union) regional secretary out of a Bulawayo factory, the workers showed their spontaneous disgust with the corrupt leadership: an action which completely confirmed the demands put forward by the engineering campaign in GEMWU (the previous name of this union).
A recent demonstration by 4,000 workers organised by a splinter union in the garment industry in Harare to demand a speeding up of the unification of both unions, also repudiated the Industrial Council agreement which does not benefit the workers. Even with Youth Brigade support for this demonstration, the large-scale mobilisation indicates considerable dissatisfaction among the rank and file.
Even in the rather quiet Harare Municipal Workers’ Union, whose leadership recently expelled two supporters of a campaign for union democracy and socialist policies, there are rumblings among the membership. This resulted, at the 1985 AGM in the replacement of the long-standing president, Maodzwa by an apparently more radical opponent, because of the workers’ dissatisfaction with his handling of wage negotiations.
None of these movements yet add up to the ground-swell needed to raise the present demands of the workers to nationally coordinated action. But they do confirm the early developments of a future wave of opposition to the employers and the policies of compromise with capitalism.
Revival of workers’ movement
The first half of 1985 was the low-water mark for the working class since the strikes of 1980-81. This low point was marked by a decline in struggle on the one hand, and the frenzy whipped up by the ZANU(PF) leadership before and after the elections.
It was marked also by the arrest and victimisation of Marxists, who while having the sympathy of many thousands of workers, were not actively defended when this would have meant defying the trade union leaders and the full weight of the Mugabe regime.
The workers’ movement will be driven into action once again by economic and political factors. Over time it will become clear that the re-election of ZANU(PF) and any deal at the top with ZAPU will have changed nothing as far as the lives and conditions of working people are concerned. Yet the economic upturn has removed the government’s excuse for the general lack of progress.
With the economic upturn and a halt to the debilitating succession of retrenchments and factory closures, the working class is regaining some of its confidence. Among many workers there will be the growing realisation that eventually they will have to fight against the very government they have elected if they are to secure the necessities of life.
The coming downturn in the economy will not necessarily have the same dampening effect on the workers’ struggle as in 1982-84. What really affects the workers’ consciousness is the change from one period or capitalism to another.
The approaching downturn will bring home to the mass of the workers that capitalism is in terrible decline with rising inflation coming along with the closing of many factories. What has obedience, patience and sacrifice availed them in the past? Many will be drawn to the conclusion that a policy of compromise with capitalism is completely against their interests.
After the pre-election wage increase of 15% in July 1985, real wages were the highest that they had been for more than a year, after many years of decline.
But the government only kept the lid down on price increases during the period leading up to the elections. Now milk, maize meal, sugar, cigarettes, electricity, and bus fares have gone up. The price of meat has increased dramatically. These price increases have already over-taken the wage increase.
The Reserve Bank has warned that a rapid increase in inflation is inevitable. At the same time it is unlikely that the minimum wage will be substantially increased, despite promises by Mugabe.
On the wider front, the government will be seen to be backtracking on its promises for education, health, lands and on other questions.
The blame for poverty wages, lack of jobs, and inflation will increasingly be put at the door of the government, as the workers now feel that the upturn should have brought about real improvements.
Another political factor which will spur the working class on to independent action will be the implementation of the Labour Relations Act which provides enormous powers to government officials. The workers were promised they would make important gains through this law.
In time this also will be found to offer very few benefits, while the workers have to suffer even more government controls. There is bound to be anger that the workers have been conned by the talk of a pro-worker law.
The workers in Zimbabwe will turn again and again to the workers’ committees to solve their problems. They will use them to their limits, before having to turn once again to the very difficult problem of transforming the unions.
Unless a leadership develops at the factory level the task of changing the unions will not even be posed. But such a movement for workers’ control of the unions cannot be created simply by the heroic efforts of a minority of conscious activists in the factories and townships: the conditions for success will arise only when the workers are driven by rising prices, bus fares, and rents, to take co-ordinated mass action.
Movement after movement is likely to take place in the workers’ committees and unions for democracy and socialist policies. Zimbabwean workers will want to copy the example of black workers in South Africa who are building independent democratic trade unions. Every effort should be made by the activists to make direct links with the unions in South Africa.
The union leadership in South Africa has the duty to give unqualified support to activists in Zimbabwe who are fighting for union democracy. They have a responsibility to make clear their total opposition to state control and repression of socialist trade unionists.
It is necessary for the activists to be firm, but patient at the same time. Until a strong, conscious movement of mass opposition develops among the workers the current leadership cannot be effectively challenged.
What holds this movement back is the formidable obstacle the workers face—the combination of the trade union bureaucracy and the Mugabe government which is quite prepared to use repression to defend the union bureaucracy and capitalism. The workers will have to confront their ‘own’ government. This movement is bound to develop, but it will do so on a massive scale only when feelings are strongly aroused.
The experience of the struggle in the engineering industry shows that even the most principled opposition to the union leadership with the general support of the workers cannot succeed if there is not a strong movement of the workers.
If this movement does not exist, the leadership will use every unconstitutional and illegal device, backed up by thuggery, to maintain control at all costs. If struggles go ahead without being buoyed up by the mass movement, then the genuine strugglers and factory leaders will be isolated and exposed to state repression.
Within the ranks of the workers the pressures are building up for union democracy, a living wage, a 40 hour week, no redundancies and the nationalisation of the monopolies—a program of change.
The challenge of the time is not the broad national mobilisation of the recent past. Rather the task is the careful development, in this period of repression, of a workers’ leadership steeled in theory and able to lead the workers when the movement goes forward again.
This can only be achieved through the socialist education of the activists, particularly the leaders in the factory committees, who are in struggle against all forms of collaboration with the capitalists.
This is the task faced by all genuine strugglers in the factories, municipalities, mines, and farms.