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Police defies court and deports S.African unionists
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Police defies court and deports S.African unionists
Zimbabwean police expelled a South African trade union team early yesterday in defiance of a court order allowing them to stay until the afternoon, union officials said.
“They have been kicked almost like evil spirits out of that country,” Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) secretary general Zwelinzima Vavi told South African state television. President Robert Mugabe’s government on Tuesday ordered the union team to be deported, accusing it of meddling. Harare had ordered the union to stay away. The COSATU delegation, which arrived on Monday, won some extra hours in Zimbabwe when the country’s High Court granted an order allowing them to stay until Wednesday when the next flight home was available.
But COSATU spokesman Patrick Craven said police drove the union delegation to the border with South Africa, leaving them at the Beit Bridge border crossing around 5 a.m (0300 GMT), in defiance of the Zimbabwe High Court order. “We managed to get a court order to the effect that the deportations were illegal but it clearly made no difference. They were escorted by police to the border,” Craven said. “They are now making their way into South Africa. They are in taxis heading south,” Craven said.
In Harare, the COSATU team’s lawyer, Alec Muchadehama, said he was awaiting further instructions from his clients. “it looks like they were driven by road last night to Beit Bridge”. The delegation hoped to meet government and ruling party members and also rights’ groups critical of Mugabe on what it described as a mission aimed at helping neighbouring Zimbabwe resolve its political crisis. COSATU said it would launch an international campaign of protest over the deportation and secretary general Vavi told state television this may include union members blocking the border crossing with Zimbabwe.
“We will do everything, including blocking that bridge where they dumped our delegates,” Vavi said. The deportation of the group – an ally of South Africa’s ruling African National Congress – makes life difficult for President Thabo Mbeki, criticised at home and abroad for taking too soft a stance on developments in Zimbabwe.
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