The ruling ZANU PF has said it is committed to restoring the dignity of workers adding that the party refuses to dignify the challenges workers face. The party attributed workers’ challenges to sanctions imposed by Western powers at the turn of the millennium. On the contrary, some analysts and opposition parties blame the workers’ challenges on ZANU P’s mismanagement of national resources. We present the party’s Workers’ Day message:
The 2022 Workers’ Day Commemorations held under the theme ‘Restoring the Dignity of the Worker’ serve as a bold and sharp reminder of ZANU PF’s role in delivering an egalitarian society that broke the barriers of racist class divisions. It is common cause that the birth of our independence is a marital product of the Party and the working class. In other words, ZANU PF is a workers’ party. Therefore, Workers’ Day gives the Party a reflective opportunity to remember the collegiality it shares with all workers across the formal and informal sectors.
The military as a strategic work force of the struggle transformed the fate of oppression and proved the ultimate strength of the working people in determining their destiny and dismantling the artificial barriers created by minority capitalist class. Without doubt, ZANU PF existentially intertwined to our hard-working people.
Given this history and ideological burden, ZANU PF and the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) are Siamese twins sustained by the umbilical cord of the class consciousness of teachers, nurses, miners, farm and mine workers among many other citizens whose skills are immensely contributing to our national fiscal growth.
As a Party of this distinguished group of citizens, we refuse to recede and dignify the challenges workers face as a result of the illegal sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe by Anglo-American capitalist oligarchs. We are aware that our economic problems are a consequence of our agrarian revolution which transformed farm workers into farm owners. As a result, our policy preoccupation is that of ensuring that our people’s disposable incomes are not eroded by inflation and that the purchasing power of our Zimbabwean Dollar is strengthened.
Guided by our mandate to policy-making as the ruling Party in government, salaries and wages must be commensurate with basic needs. True to that virtue, the Second-Republic’s ‘Engagement and Re-Engagement’ policy position is sincerely dedicated to consistent interactions with labour unions as they are the nucleus of dialogue and finding solutions to welfare challenges affecting the workers.
To this end, we find pleasure in our solidarity with the ZCTU as we are both committed to accelerating policy efforts aimed at increasing the dignity of every worker in Zimbabwe. Upgrading the working conditions in all sectors of our economy is not only ideologically imperative, but it translates to the betterment of various livelihood pillars of our society namely the health and education sectors; as well as eradicating poverty and bolstering food security measures. It is no mistake that the Second-Republic has instituted the Education 5.0 policy to provide innovative skills’ capacitation to our national workforce for the attainment of national development goals.
On that note, I urge all trade unions through the ZCTU banner to constantly engage with the Party’s Production and Labour Department for increased policy advocacy in ‘Restoring the Dignity of the Worker’. Our ‘Zimbabwe is Open for Business’ proposition would be hallow if the workers are not in a strategic partnership with the Party and Government. This is solely anchored on the fact that the uplifting of our people’s working conditions is a product continued collaboration. ZANU PF continues to be an enabling ideological nexus for solidarity in the quest to safeguard the worker’s dignity in the face of a changing global capitalist (dis)order.
Therefore, on behalf of the First Secretary and President of ZANU PF His Excellency, Cde Dr. Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa, I extend the clarion call that ‘Workers of the World, Unite!!!’
Nyika Inovakwa Nevene Vayo!!!
Yours Comradely,
Cde Kenneth S. Musanhi (MP)
ZANUPF SECRETARY FOR PRODUCTION AND LABOUR