Class war in the courts? Retrenchment packages and Continental Fashions (Pvt) Ltd. v. Mupfuriri and Others

In the last decade capitalism has witnessed a major continuous crisis locally and internationally. Such crisis has led to a major re-organisation of capitalism with an emphasis on free market policies with accelerated attacks on the working class.* 1 In the field of labour law, such attacks have seen the tightening up of an already strongly anti-working class legislative framework,2 as thousands of workers have lost jobs through retrenchments. This attack has not been confined to capital alone but includes the judiciary. In the last few years, the courts have been waging a silent but vicious war against the working class. Law and its enforcement agents like courts are not neutral social phenomena, but are conditioned by the economic base of society. In spite of their protestations to the contrary, the courts ultimately exist to advance and protect the domination of capital over labour. Through the ideology of rule of law they foster a false illusion of being impartial social organs of dispute resolution.

A ZLRev. article on labour and class struggles in Zimbabwe's courts of justice.