ZIMBABWE:Thousands of troops and police were deployed yesterday to discourage protests as trade unions failed to bring Zimbabwe to a halt with a general strike. The protests are seen as a test of the opposition's ability to mobilise ordinary people against President Robert Mugabe's rule.
The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) called the two-day strike to demand pay increases for workers hit by hyperinflation. The strike was also viewed as part of a wider campaign to force Mr Mugabe from office after 27 years.
The ZCTU wants a minimum wage of one million Zimbabwe dollars a month, about €37 at the black market rate of exchange, which dictates shop prices.
Some factories and shops closed in Harare and other cities but most were open as people turned up for jobs they can ill afford to lose in a country with 80 per cent unemployment.
Buses were operating as normal although many people can no longer afford the fare. The ambivalent support for the strike appeared to reflect a loss of confidence in the opposition's ability to challenge Mr Mugabe's rule.
The ZCTU called on people to stay at home for fear the government would unleash the security forces or the ruling Zanu-PF party militia against protesters. Hundreds of opposition activists have been abducted and severely beaten in recent weeks as Mr Mugabe increasingly relies on violence to quell dissent.
South Africa's president Thabo Mbeki, who has been appointed by regional leaders as a mediator in Zimbabwe, said he believed Mr Mugabe would step down and that the challenge was to ensure free and fair elections next year.
"President Mugabe and the leadership of Zanu-PF believe they are running a democratic country," Mr Mbeki told the Financial Times. Mr Mbeki said he would focus on MDC demands for constitutional and electoral reforms, including the abolition of laws banning newspapers critical of the government and political meetings. "We will then engage Zanu-PF saying it is necessary to respond to all of these."
Mr Mugabe has said he has no plans to step down. On Friday Zanu-PF's central committee endorsed him as the party's candidate in next year's elections.
But the economic crisis continues to put pressure on him. Inflation, officially running close to 2,000 per cent, could double by the end of the year, according to the International Monetary Fund.
The economy has suffered since white-owned farms were seized and redistributed to war veterans, subsistence farmers and the ruling elite. Tobacco production, once the largest hard currency earner, and food crops have more than halved. There is also growing dissent in the security forces. An army corporal with 15 years' service said he would quit this month.
"I'm an electrical technician so I'm going to Botswana or Namibia to see if I can find a job," he said. "Anyone with a skill is leaving. There's no problem for the army finding new recruits to fill the ranks but without the skills it's hard for the army to keep the trucks on the road . . . I think the army will crack eventually. Soldiers have families too and they are suffering."
Britain summoned the Zimbabwean ambassador in London to explain a newspaper's apparent death threats against a British diplomat in Harare. Zimbabwe's state Herald newspaper called Gillian Dare the "financier" of an alleged opposition campaign of violence, and said it would be "a pity for her family to welcome her home at Heathrow airport in a body bag". - (Guardian service)