By Evans Mushawevato

IN 2025, the ghost of imperial semantics still breathes down the neck of the African worker. And in Zimbabwe, the headline reads: ’95 percent unemployment’. Yet the fi elds are tilled. Shops are open. Buses are driven. Children are taught. Bricks are moulded. Mines are dug. Music is played. Food is sold. Markets are bustling. And the people, black people live, move, survive, hustle, and build by their own sweat.

These activities are not merely survival strategies; they are expressions of agency and self-determination. They represent a rejection of colonial economic models and an assertion of indigenous economic practices. Yet, they remain marginalised and excluded from official labour statistics. They are not workers. Why? Because the World Bank says so. Because the IMF says so. Because London says so. Because Washington says so. Because the colonial ledger still keeps our name on Page 99 of the footnotes of human worth. Because unless we are employed by them, paid by them, certifi ed by them, taxed by them, insured by them, and enslaved by them, we are considered idle. Before the arrival of European colonizers, African societies had long-established systems of labor, production, and resource management rooted in their own cultural, environmental, and social realities. Work in precolonial Africa was not merely an economic function but was deeply embedded in community, identity, and survival. It encompassed farming, herding, fi shing, hunting, craftsmanship, the labour of black people its rightful name.

Let us confront the colonial and and trading—all done within sustainable cycles and guided by communal values and ancestral wisdom. However, with the imposition of colonial rule, the European worldview, especially as articulated by European thinkers like Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels was applied to African contexts without regard for local realities. Marx and Engels developed their ideas within the context of 19th-century industrial Europe, where the alienation of labour and class struggle were the central themes. Their look at capitalism did not account for the communal, non-capitalist nature of African economies. Applying their theories wholesale to African societies erases indigenous systems of knowledge and work, and frames African labour solely through the lens of exploitation or lack, rather than agency and innovation.

Colonial narratives often portrayed Africans as idle or unproductive before European intervention. Yet the reality was quite the opposite. When colonizers arrived, they found organized societies with surplus grain, healthy livestock, and robust trade networks. These resources were not accidents, they were the product of African labour, intelligence, and social organization.

The colonial looting of these goods, followed by the imposition of forced labour and cash-crop economies, disrupted this balance and replaced African systems with exploitative ones. Understanding African labour history requires reclaiming these narratives and recognising that work existed long before colonial defi nitions and it worked well for African people on their own terms. This Workers’ Day, let us confront the naked hypocrisy of a system that denies imperial defi nitions of a ‘worker’, and in doing so, reclaim our dignity, our value, and our voice.

MDC ‘founding’ president Morgan Tsvangirai once reminisced: “When I was a worker in the mine in 1975, I was being paid $450, but those were equal to pounds . . . Takanwa doro tikange ticharutsa nemari iyi.” It was a strange nostalgia. Tsvangirai boasted of being paid a salary that historical records do not support. Reid Daly, commander of the genocidal Selous Scouts, clearly states that the average black soldier earned $30 per month.

Even with a special unit allowance, the pay hardly reached $66. Yet Tsvangirai, a black mine worker with no known formal education past his teens, claims he earned what white Special Forces couldn’t dream of. This is the tragedy of colonial trauma. The colonised begin to long for their chains, polished by time and selective memory. Under Rhodesia, the term ‘worker’ applied only to those who served white capital. The black man, stripped of his land, was forced to the mines, to the farms, to the railways. And in those places of hardship, he was told he was now a ‘worker’ but only because he toiled for the empire.

The subsistence farmer, the herdsman, the spiritual healer, the traditional artisan, mupfuri wemapadza, all these were dismissed as non-productive. They had no payslips. They had no pensions. But they had sweat. They had creativity. They had labour that sustained homes, payed school fees, and built the bones of our economy. Yet, because their labour was not certifi ed by colonial metrics, they were dismissed. Their existence was relegated a statistical embarrassment.

It is a legacy that endures to date. Today, our own statistics regurgitate this lie. Because the vendor does not punch a clock at an institution birthed in London, he is unemployed. Because the mother who is up at cock’s crow to sell tomatoes by the roadside is not in a payroll database, she is invisible. Because the kombi driver does not wear a tie and attend boardroom briefi ngs, he is not a worker. This is the mental residue of empire. What is work if not the application of human eff ort to create value that sustains.

The current definition is not only outdated, it is violent. It tells the African that unless his labour serves the interests of former colonisers, it is not valid. It tells the black child that her mother is unemployed because she makes her living in the market rather than the office. We must redefi ne the worker as anyone whose labour supports life, sustains families, contributes to society and builds the nation, whether in a suit or in gumboots.

To label ‘informal’ workers as unemployed is not merely a statistical error. It is a political weapon. The global capitalist machine thrives when the African is convinced he is nothing unless recognised by Western standards. It thrives when NGOs swoop in to ’empower’ the poor Africans who, according to fabricated data, do nothing all day.

This lie fuels debt. It justifies aid. It validates control. And, worst of all, it erodes the self-worth of the African. It makes our children aspire not for self-employment or entrepreneurship, but to formal jobs that scarcely exist. It trains them to believe that without a boss, they are nobodies. We need a Workers’ Charter that reflects African realities. A labour law that recognises the ‘informal’ economy. But more than policy, we need cultural reawakening. We must teach our children that to farm is noble. That to sew, to forge, to vend, to transport, to sell, to weave, to build, to heal, is work. On this Workers’ Day, let us abandon the colonial yardstick. Let us reject the lie that 95 percent of our people are unemployed. Let us name our own workers. Let us write our own definitions. Let us honour the real builders of Zimbabwe: the unrecognised, the ‘informal’, the indigenous.

They are not statistics of shame. They are the backbone of the nation. An African worker is any individual who contributes to the sustenance and development of their community and nation through their labour, whether in formal employment, ‘informal’ enterprises, or subsistence activities. This inclusive definition acknowledges the diverse realities of African economies and restores dignity to all forms of work. The late former President Robert Mugabe, in 1977, when asked whether he was fighting Ian Smith or Britain, responded: “Smith is f ighting a war for the continuation of British imperialism.”

Forty-eight years later, we ask: Who is defining the worker in Zimbabwe? And whose system is still being protected when the hustling black body is declared unproductive? This is not about unemployment. This is about dispossession, not of land this time, but of dignity. The African worker is alive but uncounted. Let us say it boldly: Africa is not unemployed. Africa is under-recognised, under-def ined, underwritten, undervalued. If we use their definition, factory lines, white coats, time clocks, and wage slips, then indeed, yes, Zimbabwe and Africa are jobless. But go to Mbare Musika at 4.00am. Go to Siyaso. Go to Sakubva. Go to Mupedzanhamo. Go to Chikomba. Go to Chirundu Border Post. Go to the mines of Mazowe. Go to the drylands of Tsholotsho.

The question is not whether people are working, but whether their work is counted. Whose definition are we following? Whose approval are we begging for? Whose numbers are we parroting? When Cuban President (now late) Fidel Castro sent troops to Angola, our own Cde Robert Mugabe remarked: “We will ask for military aid, yes, but not in the form of personnel …the men must be ours, otherwise where lies the glory?” Today we must ask: Where lies the glory of economic independence if the dignity of our people must still be measured by colonial standards of productivity? We fought for land.

We fought for sovereignty. But it seems we forgot to fight for the language that defines us. It is the problem of ownership, again. We return to the late ZANU Chairman Cde Herbert Wiltshire Pfumaindini Chitepo, who explained the failure of early liberation efforts as a problem of ownership. “There had not been a complete hug between the freedom f ighters and the masses.” The war was redef ined. Not as something done for the people, but something done by the people. In the same way, the definition of a ‘worker’ must now come home. If a woman wakes at 4.00am to roast maize on the roadside and puts her child through school with that money, how is she not a worker? If a man moulds bricks, sells them, how is he not a worker? If a young woman braids hair in a salon for f ive dollars a head to feed her siblings, how is she not part of the labour force? The tragedy is not that the African is not working.

The tragedy is that we are working in ways that do not please our former masters. Because a liberated definition of work would mean a liberated economy. It would mean we no longer depend on them to validate our productivity. It would mean we own our means of survival and they, the imperialists, would be made redundant. What good is the Land Reform and Resettlement Programme, if the people working that land are declared unemployed? What good is indigenisation if the indigenous are still invisible in the metrics that matter? What is a worker? Who decides? If we accept foreign definitions of work, we will fall into foreign dependencies.

We will keep chasing foreign investors who promise jobs we already have. We will keep demeaning our own hands in search of handshakes from those who once shackled them. The colonial definition of a worker must fall. The imperial metrics of employment must fall. The racist valuation of African labour must fall. In their definition, the only real work is the work done for them. Workers’ Day must be reclaimed by people of colour, by Zimbabwe and by the continent.

This Workers’ Day, we must reclaim the legacy of Chimurenga and extend it to economic justice. Just as we took up arms to reclaim land, we must take up voice to reclaim the honour of our labour. Let every African country declare: We will define the worker for ourselves. Let us enshrine that definition in our constitutions, our school syllabi, our national narratives. Let no child grow up thinking their mother is unemployed because she sells vegetables. Let no man die thinking his years in the so-called informal sector were wasted. We all are proud that we fought for our country and won it. Let that pride now extend to economics. To dignity. To ownership not only of minerals From top: Africa is not unemployed.

Africa is underrecognised, under-defined, underwritten, undervalued. and land, but of meaning itself. The war has changed, it has not ended. As long as our people are called jobless when they work harder than any; as long as our labour is informal while theirs is dignified, as long as our sweat is invisible while theirs is praised, we are not free.

This Workers’ Day, let Africa say:

We are the workers.

We are the employers.

We are the economy.

We are the industry.

We are the value.

We are the future.

And we will not ask for permission to define ourselves.