THIS week the country joined the rest of the world in celebrating International Workers Day on May 1.
Trade Unions held separate celebrations country-wide.
The Zimbabwe Federation of Trade Unions (ZFTU) held their celebrations in Chinhoyi while Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) held theirs at Dzivarasekwa Stadium in Harare, which was poorly attended.
The flop is another issue, but to understand the underlying cause of the low turnout is important as it defines modern-day Zimbabwe.
Trade unions such as the ZCTU are still to come to terms with why their job actions or Workers’ Day celebrations were poorly attended, in turn offering a wide range of disguised excuses.
They say ‘May Day celebrations have lost their lustre as 80 percent of the population is unemployed’.
They deliberately choose to ignore that Zimbabwe’s economy has changed.
Indigenes now own the means of production unlike in the past where everyone was a worker.
Today most people who are supposed to be workers are their own bosses.
It seems they did not see it coming, but it was all in black and white.
The majority of people in Zimbabwe are employed in the informal sector.
The informal sector refers to activities and income that are partially or fully outside Government regulation, taxation and observation.
According to a Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (ZIMSTATS) survey of six million people, only 11 percent of Zimbabweans are in formal employment.
About 84 percent are in informal employment; the largest group being in the wholesale and retail sector, repair of motor vehicles and motor cycles, thereby constituting 52 percent, followed by other services and manufacturing at 14 percent each.
The informal sector contributes around 20 percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or a total value added contribution of about US$2 billion.
This has negatively impacted on the ZCTU which relied on 85 percent donor funding and subscriptions from the members who no longer subscribe since they are no longer in formal employment.
With so many people in informal employment, Workers Day celebrations are becoming more and more irrelevant to Zimbabweans.
This explains why, on May Day, many did not find it essential to join the celebrations as they were busy with their businesses.
Those in the formal and informal employment have deemed ZCTU irrelevant, describing the union leaders as politicians rather than workers’ representatives.
They described ZCTU as a failed movement in trade unionism.
“Zimbabweans are too busy to participate in cheap political processes,” said one entrepreneur Tinotenda Mako.
“People want empowerment and things that give them food on the table and not to be used by charlatans who have failed to show their relevance in society.”
Another farmer from Domboshawa, Mukudzei Mabwe, said ZCTU had become a zombie being used to propagate foreign agendas.
He accused the union leaders of wining and dining with different governments from the West at the expense of protecting interests of the working class.
“Who does not know that ZCTU is Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)?” Mabwe asked.
At independence in 1980, there were six trade unions, namely the African Trade Union Congress (ACTU), the National African Trade Union Congress (NACTU), Trade Union Congress of Zimbabwe (TUCZ), United Trade Unions of Zimbabwe (UTUZ), Zimbabwe Federation of Labour (ZFL) and the Zimbabwe Trade Union Congress (ZTUC).
On February 28 1981, all these unions came together to form the ZCTU.
And during the first five years of independence, a good relationship existed between the Government and the ZCTU.
It was only after the union’s second congress in 1985 that the ZCTU began to take an increasingly confrontational position against Government.
The union was then used by the West as a regime change tool which saw it morphing into the now desperate and almost defunct Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) formed and launched in September 1999.
The leadership of the party came from the labour movement. 
It is important to note that the ZCTU died with Morgan Tsvangirai at the helm when it gave birth to the MDC in 1999.
In many instances, officials in ZCTU were MDC officials at the same time.
So the ZCTU was MDC and the MDC was ZCTU.
The labour-backed party planned massive demonstrations, strikes and stay-aways in a bid to oust the ZANU PF-led Government from power.
These acts, coupled with the illegal sanctions imposed by the West, led to the collapse of industry.
But Government has initiated empowerment programmes that have resulted in indigenes starting their own companies — which in turn has crippled the ZCTU funding.
Such is the sad history of this trade union which got itself on the wrong side of history and was overtaken by events to the point of irrelevance.