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Help Zim exiles, urges Cosatu
24/04/2008 22:21 - (SA)
Johannesburg - South Africa's top trade unionist called on Thursday on workers to respect the rights of Zimbabwean exiles who have fled their homeland in the search for work and food.
"The appeal we are making is for all South Africans to embrace other Africans who are in much-more-desperate situations than they are," said Zwelinzima Vavi, general secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu).
Vavi's comments, made at a meeting of civil society groups, comes amid growing reports of attacks on Zimbabwe immigrants in South Africa.
Up to three million Zimbabweans are believed to have fled the economic meltdown in their homeland, where unemployment now stands at more than 80%, and the vast majority have headed south to the continent's No 1 economy.
Regional efforts 'a complete failure'
Zimbabweans are frequently blamed for crime by South Africans and for taking jobs off locals who face their own high unemployment rate of about 40%.
Vavi said that regional efforts to defuse a post-election crisis in Zimbabwe had been a complete failure.
President Thabo Mbeki has been given the task by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to negotiate an end to the stand-off between the opposition and Robert Mugabe's ruling party in Zimbabwe where results of a March 29 presidential election have still to be announced.
Mbeki has been widely criticised for denying there is a crisis in Zimbabwe, and Vavi made it clear he disagreed with the South African president's assessment.
"We agree that there is a crisis, we agree that SADC and its facilitation has failed not only the people of Zimbabwe, but have failed the whole continent."
Cosatu traditionally has been an ally of Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who formerly headed the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions.
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