Zweli the Ranks

You received COSATU’s statement following the raid on the ZCTU offices in Harare, Zimbabwe yesterday, as a special despatch because of the urgency of the situation. The first linked item below is the subsequent statement issued by the ZCTU itself. In the statement it is recorded that ZCTU Financial Administrator Galileo Chirebvu was taken away by the Zimbabwean CID. This comrade has not yet been released, to our knowledge.

The South African YCL has not hesitated to come out with a strong expression of solidarity for the Zimbabwean masses in a brief but comprehensive message which is a good model of how such messages can and should be written. The YCL correctly reminds the reader of the major upcoming event, namely the general strike called by the ZCTU for 3rd and 4th April, 2007, and the necessity to display huge solidarity on the South African side on those two days. See the second link.

We still await the statements of the SACP, the Zimbabwe Solidarity Forum, the ANC, the ANC Youth League, and the ANC Women’s League on the new Zimbabwe situation following the events of the last three days.

But following the cold, miserable, hand-washing statement of SA government spokesperson Ronnie Mamoepa to the effect that “the problems of Zimbabwe will be resolved by the people of Zimbabwe”, Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Aziz Pahad has now been forced to express himself in rather stronger terms. See the third link below, to the report in The Citizen.

The best full summary of the day’s events we have seen is the one gathered up by Associated Press for CNN, linked below. This is also the only one we have seen that mentions says anything about the condition of Arthur Mutambara, who appears to have survived, but with head injuries. The image above is of Morgan Tsvangirai, taken at his court appearance yesterday.

Finally, and for the record, the main BBC report is linked below. Notice that neither The Citizen, nor the CNN, nor the BBC give attribution to individual journalists for these breaking-news compilations.

The Communist University wiki web site, amadlandawonye, passes the figure of 450,000 page-views today, while its daily archive moves through the third month of its third continuous year.

This is nearly one-and-a-half times as many hits as the main COSATU web site (303,000) although the COSATU site has been counting twice as long. What makes the difference?

This daily blog is what makes the difference. This is because it draws people’s attention to the new material that is going on the web site. The blog also has a considerable readership of its own, both as e-mail and as a free-standing web log.

But of course, just when we are confident enough to make these small claims, at that moment we find that familiar difficulties rear up again. Yesterday there were problems of unwanted repeat postings (message going out three times although posted only once). Today there is a problem of no posting (message sent to blog but not forwarded to the list), making it necessary to re-post. There is a risk that it will arrive twice again. Please accept apologies if that should happen.

The Communist University meets this evening at 17h00 to discuss Che Guevara’s 1967 “Message to the Tricontinental”. This is the message of internationalism, comrades, never needed more than now.

Click on these links:

ZCTU Offices Raided (126 words)

YCL condemns violation of rights in Zimbabwe (337 words)

Pahad calls on Zim to respect rule of law, The Citizen (294 words)

Zimbabwe opposition leader taken to hospital from court, CNN (1172 words)

S Africa in Zimbabwe rights call , BBC News (630 words)