Against all odds: the union’s victory to elevate the status of college lecturers in Zimbabwe

How does a lecturers’ union influence legislative change and restore the status of its members in a toxic, polarized, and polarising political environment? Through commitment, resilience and indomitable will. This article chronicles the unlikely victory of the College Lecturers Association of Zimbabwe (COLAZ) that saw the Government of Zimbabwe enact a new law to address the terms and conditions of higher and further education teaching personnel and those of education support staff.

COLAZ organizes in teachers, polytechnic, industrial and vocational colleges (excluding universities) and was formed in 2005 with a specific mandate to restore the status of college lecturers.

Why restore? In the early years of Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980, college lecturers’ salaries stood at 70% of those of university professors with a lot of other comparable job-related benefits. All that changed in the early 90s when the government undertook a job evaluation exercise underpinned by its intent to introduce the Patterson Grading System. Consequently, college lecturers were placed at the same level as schoolteachers while university lecturers maintained their autonomous status, governed by university councils regulated by the State Universities Statutes while collectively bargaining under the Labour Act Chapter 28:01. Meanwhile teaching personnel in tertiary colleges were lumped with teachers and nurses and the rest of the civil service under the Public Service Act (16:04).

The Public Service Act in its current form is a colonial piece of legislation that denies civil servants labour rights as prescribed in Conventions 87 and 98 of the International Labour Organization. Notably, the Public Service Act states that civil servants are not allowed to go on strike; they can only consult rather than collectively bargain. In terms of disciplinary action, a member of the civil service must comply before appealing. The Act also provides for the setting up of the NJNC wherein, in the event of a deadlock, arbitration can only happen if both the workers and the employer declare a deadlock. Predictably, the government has never declared a deadlock, citing lack of capacity to pay every time. The Government team of negotiators is composed of director level civil servants who have no decision-making powers and must routinely consult the Minister of Labour and the Minister of Finance. Often, when they take time out to consult, consultations go on for an inordinate amount of time and they implement their rejected offer without a signed agreement.

It is against this background that college lecturers met at Masvingo Teachers College in 2009 for an Extra-Ordinary Congress to resuscitate COLAZ which had failed to take off after its formation in 2005. Congress elected a new National Executive Board with David Dzatsunga as President. The mandate given to the National Executive Board was to restore the status of college lecturers to the pre-Patterson years where terms and conditions were comparable to those in universities. The National Executive Board was to fight for the restoration of the 70% of university salary principle and other terms and conditions from the past. There was also the matter of recruiting lecturers, most of whom were organized by teacher unions. The union was directed to open its headquarters in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, and recruit union staff once membership dues started flowing in. By 2011, the basic infrastructure was in place.

In 2011, COLAZ convened an Annual Conference that unleashed a tsunami of anti-union bashing by the government through the Ministry of Higher Education, particularly the Secretary of the Ministry. The conference resolved to go on strike despite a provision of the Public Service Act that clearly prohibited civil servants from engaging in strike action. Lecturers argued that it was an unjust law we had no good reason to obey. At the time, all efforts to engage in social dialogue had been met with a wall of silence from the authorities.

Vocational Training Colleges in Zimbabwe are headed by famously corrupt principals who are politically appointed and enjoy impunity. After we served the strike notice to the Public Service Commission, the Secretary of the Ministry of Higher Education summoned all college principals with instructions to bring two lecturers, one female, one male, who are not COLAZ members. Dark clouds were ominously gathering. The system was galvanizing to clamp down on the union. This was soon to be confirmed by the lecturers who attended the infamous meeting. The Secretary and the principals resolved to pull every stop to rid colleges of any COLAZ presence. Reports from meeting attendees spoke of an agitated and determined group who were united in branding the union the enemy. We knew at the time that Ministry officials and college principals were involved in a scheme or rather scam in which they were pocketing money out of so-called projects such as hiring out of college facilities to the public, agricultural production, vehicle repairs among others, the proceeds of which they shared with the Secretary who had issued an enabling Production and Pricing Policy to justify the looting. The union had spoken against this, including through the media, hence the animosity. The Union was hitting their bottom line and it had to go.

The strike action began in September 2011, paralysing all programmes in most institutions. In no time the empire struck back. Eager principals were instructed by the Secretary to suspend all COLAZ leadership and to submit misconduct charges against the general membership who were not coming to work. General union membership quickly retreated once the national and branch leadership was suspended, preferring to face the lesser evil of misconduct charges. It was a clear case of striking the shepherd to scatter the sheep. Even the union President was not spared, and it became clear that we indeed had no labour rights to speak of and that our struggle was much harder than we had assumed. The brutal manner in which the strike was crushed shocked us. There was not even the slightest attempt to discuss our cause. This was a moment of reckoning. The union had to agree to sink or find a means to swim. Leadership was required. Money would be needed to hire competent lawyers, and the union did not have much given the size of its membership.

While we were ruminating on how to defend the union, the Ministry began a schedule of misconduct hearings where they sent out disciplinary teams to every affected college. It was clear from the proceedings that the verdicts were pre-determined. Technically, these were winnable cases according to the lawyers, but these were kangaroo hearings characterized by intimidation and outright bullying. We were facing an existential crisis and needed to hibernate like a snake to change our skin, our strategy.

Early in 2012 the verdicts from the hearings were announced. Most of the general membership were fined various amounts. National and branch leadership were transferred from their current stations to, in most instances, stations far away, with immediate effect. Spouses teaching at the same stations were separated. The transfers included fines deductible from meagre salaries. Children were left without parental care. All in all, 30 of the branch leaders were moved and it was the darkest hour in the short life of COLAZ. Our lawyers rightly counselled that we had to comply with the verdicts or else face instant dismissal from the service. So, we all complied, and the union started the appeals process which yielded other surprises.

The appeals process has two options: seeking a review from the Public Service Commission or filing an application with the Labour Court. The union used both options. While we got favourable outcomes from the Court, we discovered that it had no power to enforce its own judgements and that we had to register the judgement by applying to the High Court. We further discovered that in the case of a monetary award, the Union could not enforce it because of the State Liabilities Act which prohibits attaching Government property. We were in a corner and needed to abandon the litigations amidst serious intra-union rancor, especially from those who had been transfered. It became clear that the legal route favoured the employer and enriched our lawyers while draining the union of resources and energy.

While all this was unfolding, the union joined Education International (EI) in 2015. We immediately presented our case to the Secretary General of EI who directed us to a certain David Robinson, Executive Director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) who expressed a willingness to assist COLAZ. We soon had a Development Cooperation Agreement with CAUT which helped capacitate the union in terms of office equipment, conference funding and networking with other higher and further education unions in Education International. Protest letters to the Zimbabwean authorities came from a lot of unions in the global north, with demands for the government to cease and desist. It helped immensely to have external voices rallying to our cause. This was the solidarity we had lacked in the beginning and it did shake the establishment.

The union also resolved at its 2017 Annual Conference to abandon the radical approach for a more measured advocacy and lobbying campaign meant to expose the excesses of the Ministry while amplifying our grievances through well researched papers, media campaigns, engagements with parliament, media exposes, appeals to the Office of the President and Cabinet among other strategies. Unions such NTEU (Australia), UCU (UK), Danish Masters lent their financial and moral support.

The first and widely celebrated outcome was the dismissal of the hated Secretary by President Mugabe, following an expose we published in the Herald Newspaper. The article was entitled COLAZ hits back at Mbizvo: Right to Reply in which our Secretary General brutally laid bare the corrupt activities of the Secretary and how that made him unfit for office. With that victory, the Ministry and the principals had no choice but to take a step back. The Union had survived and was now enjoying the victory of having dethroned a mini dictator.

The breakthrough towards restoration of the status of college lecturers came with the 2017 coup that saw the removal of octogenarian President Robert Mugabe, ushering in the Second Republic in 2018.

Honorable Minister Professor Amon Murwira was appointed to the Higher and Tertiary Education, Innovation and Science and Technology Ministry in 2018. With a new parliament in place, the union hastened to again petition the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee of the Ministry who on receiving the petition shared it with the Minister for his response before the union could lead oral evidence. Instead of responding to the committee, the Minister opted to invite the union leadership to a meeting. He acknowledged that the petition was most justified, and that the solution could only come from us, the Ministry and the union. He advised COLAZ to withdraw the petition from Parliament to allow for an intra-Ministry intervention. While the Minister agreed that our quest for the 70% of universities salary was right and just, it was not reason enough to convince the President and Cabinet because there were many other professionals (doctors, engineers, etc.) in the civil service who were lumped in the Patterson Grading System with us. There was nothing special about our Master’s degrees or PhDs.

Professor Murwira framed our argument thus: Our TVET colleges are best placed to fulfil the government’s efforts to introduce Education 5.0. They are best suited for the teaching of a heritage-based education whose graduates will produce goods and services. However, he continued, these colleges will need autonomy so that the academics therein can have the academic freedom necessary for innovation to take place unencumbered by the bureaucracy of the civil service. Further, personnel in the sector would need to have favorable terms and conditions comparable to that of universities. Therefore, all TVET colleges should be migrated from the Public Service Commission to a new employment authority dubbed the Tertiary Education Services Council (TESC). A change of legislation was therefore mooted and an existing law, the Manpower Planning and Development Act was flagged for amendment to accommodate the envisaged paradigm shift toward Education 5.0.

The President and Cabinet were duly convinced, and the bill passed unopposed in both houses of the legislature, with the President in agreement. Thus was born the Manpower Planning and Development Act / 2020, a culmination of a union struggle that began in 2009. Against all odds, in one of the most difficult environments in which to organize, a small but patiently determined union managed to cause a change of legislation and provide its members their well-deserved status.