– by Mike Hall
A Chinese cargo ship packed with rocket grenades, mortar rounds and 3 million rounds of AK-47 ammunition destined for strife-torn Zimbabwe is now reported to be returning its cargo to China. South African trade unionists refused to unload the ship Friday and other African unions have made similar vows in other ports.
Zimbabwe and its president Robert Mugabe have a long record of worker and human rights violations. On March 29, Zimbabwe held a presidential election where the opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, is reported to have received more votes.
More than three weeks after the balloting, the results have yet to be released and independent observers and human and worker rights leaders say that’s because Mugabe’s ruling party—in power for 28 years—lost. There has been a new wave of violence and arrests against unions and other regime opponents in the past several weeks following the elections. The arms on the Chinese ship would have arrived just as a crackdown against those demanding democracy in Zimbabwe is occurring.
After the South African government said it would allow the ship to unload in Durban and the arms be transferred overland through South Africa, the nation’s dockers, who are members of the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (SATAWU), moved to block the arms shipment. Said Randall Howard, SATAWU general secretary:
South Africa cannot be seen to be facilitating the flow of weapons into Zimbabwe at a time when there is political dispute and volatile situation….Our members employed in the Durban container terminal will not unload this cargo nor will any of our members in the truck driving sector move this cargo by road.
The ship left Durban over the weekend and was believed to be headed to other African ports, but the broad mobilization of trade unions, human rights groups, churches and other civil society organizations prevented this ship from unloading its cargo in any port in the region.
Says Guy Ryder, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC):
Without the action by the unions of South Africa and neighboring countries in support of their Zimbabwean colleagues, and backed by the international trade union movement, these arms could well have made it to their intended destination. In the current situation, there can be little doubt that the Mugabe regime would have used them against Zimbabweans, as they have done before.
David Cockroft, general secretary of the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), commented:
We hope that this will bring this affair to a close…there’s a lesson here: that when governments refuse to do what they should, it’s in the power of ordinary people—in the ITF, our member unions, the International Trade Union Confederation, the Southern Africa Litigation Center and the churches—to do what has to be done.
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