It was a journey that began at the ZCTU Congress in Gweru in 1988 when, with a few hours before the elective congress; a delegation knocked on my hotel room in the middle of the night and persuaded me to run for the post of secretary-general of the country’s national labour federation.
I was to win that election and the first task that we achieved together was to extricate the ZCTU from the clutches of government by making it a genuinely autonomous labour body that represented the interests of the country’s workers.
We fought that battle together and achieved that true independence and autonomy of the ZCTU.
When the government introduced a toxic IMF-foisted economic structural adjustment programme that was not in the interest of the workers, we fought together and the government began to take the voice of the workers seriously.
In 1998, together, we turned the workers’ voice into a sonorous national chorus that could shout for a national shut down to articulate the genuine concerns of the country’s workers. Together, we galvanized the workers into a formidable force that could blow out the smoke from our productive industries to clamour for national attention.
The government began to take us seriously.
We achieved that together.
In 1999, through the national working people’s convention, together with the workers of this country, you clamoured for a workers-driven political party.
The country could never be the same again.
That working people’s convention gave birth to the Movement for Democratic Change in 1999. Since then, the party has become a perennial people’s voice in Parliament. It became a formidable political force that administered the country’s major cities and towns and Zanu PF—- to this day—-remain visitors and strangers in the country’s cities, towns and other rural enclaves where the gospel of change has made a huge imprint.
We have achieved that together.
In 2008, we defeated Robert Mugabe and we showed–through an inclusive government—that it is possible for government to be an arena that can bring positive and palpable change in the lives of the people.
We achieved that together.
In that government we turned around the economy, stabilized prices and gave a battered nation the reason to hope again.
We achieved that together.
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