Security guards urged to engage retired police officers in workers’ rights campaign

Zimbabwe Communist Party (ZCP) General Secretary Nicholas Ngqabutho Mabhena has urged the Zimbabwe Security Guards Union (ZISEGU) to work with retired police officers to educate serving members of the police about workers’ welfare.

Mabhena argued that although members of the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) officers are often deployed to suppress public protests, they ultimately face the same economic hardships as the citizens they police.

Addressing delegates at ZISEGU’s Fourth National Congress in Harare last week, Mabhena said the private security sector had an important responsibility beyond protecting property, calling on the union to expand its membership while strengthening solidarity among workers.

He also encouraged ZISEGU to intensify recruitment efforts, noting many private security guards remain outside organised labour structures.

“I guess you are still recruiting because many security officers out there are not organised into a trade union. This is the task that you have,” he said.

Turning to the relationship between ZISEGU and police officers, Mabhena said the two groups worked closely together despite occupying different positions within Zimbabwe’s security sector.

He said while private security guards routinely work alongside police officers in protecting mines, businesses, residential properties and other facilities, the two groups differ in one important respect: private security guards are legally allowed to belong to trade unions, while police officers are not.

“You work together because when a criminal comes into a workplace, you apprehend the criminal and the first port of call is the ZRP,” said the trade union ally.

“But the difference between you and members of the ZRP is that as private security officers you have a right to belong to a trade union, whereas members of the ZRP do not.”

The ZCP secretary argued that serving police officers often identify themselves with the State rather than as workers, making them more likely to enforce state directives against demonstrators.

“They see themselves as part of the State. This is why they would be deployed to brutalise some of us who would be marching for a genuine cause because they are deployed by the State,” Mabhena said.

He said this often placed police officers in direct conflict with ordinary citizens during demonstrations over economic and social grievances. 

However, he argued many officers experience the same hardships as the people they are instructed to police, including low salaries, rising food prices, expensive school fees and the high cost of living.

Mabhena said this made it important for ZISEGU to engage police officers in discussions about their shared economic interests.

“If you join the ZRP at the age of 20, at 40 you are out of service,” he said, noting some officers spend their careers living in police barracks, creating a sense of separation from ordinary citizens before returning to the same communities after retirement.

“They believe they are removed from society as a whole. But after 20 years they go back to the same society. They will then live with us, the people they were brutalising.”

For that reason, Mabhena proposed ZISEGU actively recruit retired police officers who could then engage serving members of the ZRP about workers’ welfare and life after retirement.

“The first step is to recruit retired members of the ZRP into this trade union movement because as seniors who have retired, they have a task to engage the serving members of the ZRP,”

he said.

The trade unionist said discussions should centre on the everyday challenges affecting all workers regardless of profession.

“The message is simple, we all buy bread from the same shop, we all use kombis, we all pay school fees, we all get paid almost the same salary and we can’t pay our bills,” Mabhena said.

Mabhena stressed that while security personnel had a duty to protect life and property, they should also safeguard citizens exercising their constitutional rights peacefully.

“If the price of bread has gone up and I need to march to deliver a petition, you must protect me. If we are marching to the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education to say school fees are too high, we should not be brutalised,” he said.

“We should be accompanied by security officers and members of the ZRP, making sure we march peacefully and deliver the petitionHe added that working with police did not require complex ideological debates but rather a shared understanding of the common challenges facing workers.”

Ending his address, Mabhena said Zimbabwe’s workers still had an unfinished task of making sure the country’s wealth benefited all citizens rather than a privileged few.

“When we say we want to complete our liberation, we are saying we want to place the economy of this country in the hands of society as a whole,” he said.

“We all must share in the national cake. We want clean drinking water, decent clothes, proper healthcare and decent housing. We just need the basic things. We do not need to be millionaires or billionaires.”