zimfinalpush
Protesters call for Mugabe's head in Cosatu-led march
Reprinted with thanks from The Star (SA)
The Congress of SA Trade Unions led a protest march to the Zimbabwean consulate in central Johannesburg yesterday - the day a general strike was called in Zimbabwe. A crowd of about 300, many wearing red Cosatu T-shirts, marched peacefully from Beyers Naudé Square to the consulate in nearby Anderson Street. They carried placards with slogans such as "Hang Mugabe", "Mugabe must repent or perish", "We want guns now to blow out Mugabe's head" and "Mugabe I will kill you in person". Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi and SA Communist Party general secretary Blade Nzimande addressed the marchers before setting off for the consulate, where Vavi spoke to the crowd again. Police guarded the building in which the consulate is housed, but members of the public were allowed in and out as usual. The protesters presented a memorandum of demands to a consulate official.
In the memorandum, the SACP, Cosatu and the Zimbabwe Solidarity Forum demanded an end to "barbaric repression by the Zimbabwe security forces". "This is not the freedom Zimbabweans fought for when they sacrificed their lives in the liberation struggle," the memo read. With rampant inflation and widespread unemployment in Zimbabwe, the signatories demanded: minimum wages linked to the poverty datum line; reduction of income tax to 30%; workers earning less than the poverty datum line should not be taxed; free antiretroviral drugs; the stabilising of prices of basic commodities; and an end to the harassment of informal-economy workers. When the official who accepted the memorandum walked back inside, part of the crowd surged forward, but were held back by the police. The crowd then dispersed.
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