No to victimization of ZCTU leadership

THE Students Solidarity Trust (SST) unreservedly condemns the continued escalation of politically oriented persecution of targeted activists in a bid to cow them into submission.

This comes in the wake of the arrest of the ZCTU President Lovemore Matombo and the Secretary General Wellington Chibebe stemming from their purported utterances of falsehoods pertaining to the death of some teachers’ as well urging and inciting people to rise against the government on May Day celebrations in Dzivarasekwa.

While the basis and merits of the allegation being leveled against the two are open to question, what is however clearly emerging is the fact that this is a ploy designed to frustrate and kill the spirit of civic resistance to the excesses of the incumbent regime.

This has been made manifest by their continued illogical refusal of bail. It is now more than a week since they were incarcerated and they continue to be kept in remand prison without any logical justification of their continued detention especially given the fact that these are permanent residents of this country and there is no risk of them skipping bail. In any event the case against them is a frivolous one and of little substance.

Also shocking is the fact of the widespread and random beatings of teachers which has been given a lot of coverage in the press and has become an open secret. The recent arrests raise eyebrows and beg the question of whether this is not only a question of trying to deliberately silence these mouthpieces that have relentlessly pursued the attainment of social justice as well as acting as an avenue of exposing the various  escalating acts of brutal repression, being perpetrated against workers across the divide.

We are, therefore, gravely concerned about the currently prevailing state of affairs and urge all concerned parties behind these arbitrary acts of repression to desist and respect the basic notion of human rights and civility to the general populace. The violation of these basic tenets of mutual respect tolerance on the basis of skewed and misdirected political conceptions is unacceptable and incapable of any justification.

To these end we demand that justice must be done.ZCTU leaders must be released. They have a duty to represent workers. For them to be remanded in custody is not only political but non compliance of the labour law and the constitution of the country. Violence must stop! No Zimbabwean must die because of political affiliation!!!!!