NUMSA CONDEMNS THE MILITARY COUP IN ZIMBABWE
17 November 2017
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) condemns in the strongest terms, the military coup which has taken place in Zimbabwe. The army in Zimbabwe has taken over power through a military coup and no amount of concealment of this most obvious of facts can change the ugly reality of the unconstitutional military takeover of power in Zimbabwe.
The people of Zimbabwe in general and the Zimbabwean working class and rural poor in particular, have suffered terribly and for a very long time, especially after 1990, when it became very clear that independent Zimbabwe had failed to uproot – root, stem and all - British and Western European economic domination of Zimbabwe.
Writers and historians of all kinds have speculated about how Robert Mugabe, the President of Zimbabwe, used the demand for land justice in Zimbabwe, as well as anti-colonial and anti-imperialist rhetoric to ensure a way of sustaining himself, his family and his friends in positions of power. This week the Zimbabwean army is attempting to depose him through a military coup.
The army has occupied the capital, Harare and has taken over the state broadcast facility. Military vehicles can be seen patrolling the streets and soldiers are conducting random searches of civilians. No doubt, as the days stretch into weeks, and the weeks stretch into months, and of course the months into years as the army ‘sorts out the criminals around Mugabe” we will come to learn a lot more about the in-fighting which has sparked this military takeover both in the Zanu-PF, in the army and in the country itself.