Hands Off Nurses!

HANDS OFF NURSES! SALUTE TO THE HEROIC AND PATHBREAKING HEALTH WORKERS! FORWARD TO AN ALL OUT PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SECTOR GENERAL STRIKE! VICTORY TO THE WORKING CLASS!

As we speak nurses, doctors and other health workers in major hospitals have been on strike demanding a living wage and improved working conditions. The initial sparks started last month when nurses and doctors at the largest hospital in Zimbabwe, Parirenyatwa, staged a spontaneous demonstration against the unilateral cutting of their incomes and failure by the government to fulfil its promises. As a way of trying to hoodwink the workers the government announced a pre-emptive offer to civil servants and government pensioners. The government offered workers a 50% increase on their already paltry salaries and a flat across the board US$75 and US$30 Covid-19 allowance for government workers and pensioners respectively. The workers rightly rejected the offer describing as a mockery. Yesterday the state arrested thirteen nurses and workers’ leaders at one major hospital for protesting against the slave wages and unsafe working conditions. We call for solidarity action to ensure the immediate and unconditional release of the workers.

The militant teachers’ union, ARTUZ, quickly condemned the offer by the government immediately calling for the reinstatement of the pre-October 2018 income of 520 which was in the stable US$ and has since been demonstrating across the country. Today the real value of teachers’ income is around US$40 per month with pensions, medical and other subscriptions being eroded on a daily basis. Following on that, the biggest trade union federation, ZCTU, issued a statement calling on all workers and the general population to protest against the slave wages and repression. It also called for a United Front of all progressive forces to fight for a better life for all.

As the Revolutionary Workers Group of Zimbabwe we strongly support the strike by all health workers as well as the calls for action by the teachers union and the workers federation calling for a living wage and a better life for all. We also support the call for a United Front of all working peoples formations prepared to fight for the workers and poor masses. It is urgent and crucial, however, that all sectors of the health fraternity, the civil service and all workers come out in full force to conquer a living wage and a better life.

-For a living Wage! Workers fight for a living wage and better working conditions through mass action controlled by ordinary workers!
-Stop all the arrests, persecution and repression of the poor masses and their leaders! Release all those imprisoned!
-For survival, workers need to assert control of all PPE and use masks at work and in street actions, strikes and assemblies!
-Against unemployment and destitution we demand a sliding scale of working hours to provide decent jobs for all through massive public works programs to provide housing, education and medical care for all!
-Against the ever rising prices and inflation we demand a sliding scale of wages!
-To defend the rights of our class we fight for democratic rights of the workers, the super-exploited and oppressed peoples in the workplace, streets and public domain!
-For free, comprehensive and secular education for all!
-For free quality health for all!
-Workers take back your unions!
-Organise the unorganised! Form unions of the unemployed as fully affiliated unions!
-The government and city municipalities must stop the attack on the vendors and informal traders!
-Militant workers to form class struggle caucuses in the unions to fight for this program!
-Workers to form strike committees to lead the resistance to the growing attacks on the wages and working conditions of the poor and the livelihood of the majority poor!
-Workers to form workers defence guards for defence against state violence!
-A national strike committee to organise and plan for a general strike!
-Workers break with the MDC and ZANU PF and form a Workers Party! No to US and Chinese imperialism!
-For a workers government on the basis of the armed people to implement decisions that benefit the workers and the poor!
-Nationalization of all companies without indemnification to the big shareholders under workers control!
-Land to be distributed to all poor peasants together with a state bank to provide inputs to all small farmers!
-A workers state that defends workers, peasants and the poor masses against the local and foreign capitalists!
-An African socialist revolution as part of the international revolution that alone can guarantee a better life for all!
-A new WORLD PARTY of socialist revolution based on the TRANSITIONAL PROGRAM of 1938 to lead the revolution to end capitalism and open the road to socialism!

Revolutionary Workers Group of Zimbabwe (Section of the International Leninist Trotskyist Tendency-ILTT)

07 July 2020
Harare, Zimbabwe