Like many in the Labour Party, I recently spent a week discussing the replacement of a party leader who has fallen out with the unions and is reluctant to leave office.
But while my colleagues were in Manchester, I was visiting Zimbabwe in solidarity with the leaders of its Congress of Trade Unions. Not for them a televised walkout during the party leader's farewell speech to Congress. Their peaceful protests ended in violent arrest followed by savage beatings.
The crackdown, overseen by Robert Mugabe's minister for state security and senior brute Didymus Mutasa, has drawn severe criticism from the United Nations. Mugabe had justified the violence on his way back from a UN General Assembly meeting in New York, claiming during a stopover in Cairo that the "police were right in dealing sternly with the ZCTU leaders", continuing dismissively that "some people are now crying foul that they were assaulted. Yes you get a beating . . . when the police say move, move."
British MPs are not particularly welcome in Zimbabwe and travelling around the country is nerve-racking. Mugabe's secret police, the CIO, have informers in almost every community. So I felt tense going to meet Lovemore Matombo, president of the ZCTU, in central Harare. However, once I had ducked in off the street he bundled me into a lift up to the relative safety of his office.
Matombo, who was nursing a hand in a splint, told me hundreds of his members employed by the state who took strike action have been sacked and replaced with non-union labour. Unemployment is at over 80 per cent, inflation 1,000 per cent; his union struggles to survive and he is afraid for his family, since the children of union officials are constantly threatened.
Matombo's deputy, Lucia Matibenga, was assaulted in police custody following her arrest on 13 September. At her home in Gweru, Lucia told me that women bear the brunt of Zimbabwe's economic collapse and are in the forefront of the fight for political reform. She was covered in bruises and her eardrum had been perforated by a blow to the head. Having just driven the 300km from the capital, she was about to return for a ZCTU meeting. I was horrified to learn that her only way of getting there was by hitchhiking. Roadside hitching is the normal mode of transport for many of Zimbabwe's opposition leaders, especially the women.
The three leaders of the mainstream opposition alliance - Lovemore Matombo, Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, and Lovemore Madhuku, chair of the National Constitutional Assembly - face similar obstacles in planning their programme to end Mugabe's Zanu-PF dictatorship. Their energy has to compensate for lack of resources. Even paper and ink are beyond their means.
They appreciate the TUC protests and Foreign Office statements condemning the regime. But the struggle in Zimbabwe deserves more tangible backing from our government and unions. In Bulawayo I met Thabitha Khumalo, who addressed the TUC in Brighton and has been supported by Amicus and Unison. If Mugabe's dictatorship is to be overthrown and the people of Zimbabwe set free to rebuild their country, these brave activists need far more support.
Kate Hoey is MP for Vauxhall
