Zimbabwe unions refuse to  cancel strike

 2 March 1998
 Web posted at: 20:30 SAT, Johannesburg time (18:30 GMT) 

 HARARE, Zimbabwe (Reuters) - Zimbabwean unions Monday
 rejected government pleas to call off a two-day anti-tax strike,
 which President Robert Mugabe has threatened to stop with
 force. 

 The government said it would deploy troops and police to
 prevent the stoppage set for Tuesday and Wednesday, which
 political analysts have said would further undermine Mugabe's
 government in the southern African country. 

 Mugabe, Zimbabwe's sole ruler since the former British colony
 of Rhodesia won independence in 1980, was forced in January
 to use soldiers to crush food price riots that killed six people. 

 Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU)
 Secretary-General Morgan Tsvangirai told a news conference,
 "The position is that the stayaway is going ahead tomorrow,
 Tuesday...and we are coming back Thursday. 

 "The ZCTU leadership informed the minister that the stayaway
 will go ahead but the leadership is ready for serious
 negotiations at any time," Tsvangirai said after talks with Labor
 and Social Welfare Minister Florence Chitauro failed to break
 the deadlock. 

 The ZCTU wants Mugabe to scrap a recent 2.5 percentage
 point increase in sales tax and review a five percent
 development levy, a 15 percent tax on pension profits and
 recent food price rises, saying real earnings had fallen
 drastically since 1991. 

 Chitauro said the strike was illegal and threatened to punish
 both workers and employers if it went ahead. She obtained a
 court order to stop it which the unions said they would ignore. 

 Tsvangirai said Chitauro had in two meetings simply
 demanded the ZCTU call off the strike, but said she had no
 mandate to negotiate. 

 "The meeting today was characterized by confrontation," said
 Tsvangirai, accusing the government of ignoring union
 demands. 

 The ZCTU says the government should cut expenditure, which
 eats up 38 percent of gross domestic product and has led to a
 deficit of over 10 percent a year in the past decade. 

 Tsvangirai said the leader of Zimbabwe's independence war
 veterans, Chenjerai Hunzvi, should not threaten whites or try to
 stop the strike. 

 "We want to make it very clear that if the boycott goes ahead,
 we as the liberators of this country could very well attack the
 whites for inciting the boycott," Hunzvi told state media. 

 Mugabe's government regularly accuses white employers and
 farmers of scheming with the unions to topple it, a charge they
 strongly deny. It says whites are angry over state plans to seize
 mostly white-owned farms to resettle black peasants. 

 Tsvangirai said blacks did not need whites to tell them they are
 hungry. 

 University and college students began a class boycott Monday
 to press demands for increases in their payouts. 

 Mugabe, the 74-old former guerrilla leader, denies charges he
 has damaged the economy over the years by using national
 resources to keep a political patronage system aimed at
 sustaining his rule. 

 Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.