Zimbabwe strike call goes largely unheeded: reports (1st Lead)

Apr 3, 2007, 10:59 GMT

Johannesburg/Harare - A call by the main union body for a two-day work stay-away in Zimbabwe appeared to have gone largely ignored Tuesday morning as companies in many parts of the country reported business as usual.

In the capital Harare a Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa correspondent reported that most shops, supermarkets and banks had opened in the morning while a reporter for South African radio said that in the eastern city of Mutare everything also appeared to be 'operating as normal.'

Police were dotted on the streets of the central business district in Harare and a helicopter hovered overhead following warnings by police that they would be on 'high alert.'

The strike call by the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) comes after a three-week-long clampdown on the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

Union officials had hoped workers would heed the call to strike over the government's failure to act to halt the country's economic meltdown.

Inflation in Zimbabwe is running at 1,730 per cent and unemployment is estimated at 80 per cent.

But in shopping centres and Harare's industrial area of Graniteside, businesses and factories appeared to be open, buses running as normal and there were long queues at the main railway station.

A spokeswoman for the ZCTU, which has about 350,000 members, had told South African radio Tuesday morning the congress expected a 95- per-cent participation in the strike, which is being supported by several international trade unions.

But many Zimbabweans in the country of estimated 80-per-cent unemployment are engaged in the non-unionized informal sector, meaning a loss of earnings in the event of a work stoppage.

Zimbabwean authorities had also warned police would be out in large numbers, claiming the need to protect workers from intimidation.

In Johannesburg Tuesday, South Africa's trade union federation COSATU held a march to protest 'against slavery wages and the attacks on workers' and human rights by the Mugabe government.'

Meanwhile South African President Thabo Mbeki, who has been appointed the point man of the regional Southern African Development Community on Zimbabwe, said he believed Mugabe would peacefully relinquish power in the future.

Mbeki was speaking in an interview with the Financial Times newspaper. 'I think so. Yes, sure,' he answered when asked about the likelihood of the 83-year-old leader stepping down.

Mbeki was tasked by SADC at an extraordinary summit in Tanzania last week with mediating between Mugabe's ZANU-PF and the opposition MDC of Morgan Tsvangirai on a way out of the current political impasse.

Only 'genuinely free and fair' elections and not sanctions or a 'big stick' approach to Harare would help end the political and economic crisis in the country, he said, reiterating South Africa's position to the paper.