By Given Dingwiza
For many Zimbabwean workers, the greatest threat to job security does not come from company closures or economic decline, but from within the workplace itself.
In both parastatals and private corporations, mechanisms intended to enforce accountability are increasingly being experienced as tools of intimidation, retaliation, and unchecked managerial power.
In such environments, disciplinary processes are no longer primarily about justice or performance management; they have become instruments of leverage—used to silence dissent, punish perceived insubordination, or settle personal grudges.
Zimbabwe’s recent labour history offers a sobering reminder of how quickly this imbalance can harden when law and practice tilt in favour of employers.
The 2015 Nyamande & Another v Zuva Petroleum ruling—widely interpreted as confirming termination on notice—sent shockwaves through the labour market and was followed by reports of mass dismissals, with some estimates suggesting that tens of thousands of workers lost their jobs within a short period.
The policy backlash eventually produced legal amendments and compensation provisions, but the episode left a lasting lesson: when the system grants wide discretion and weak accountability, workers absorb the shock first.
Yet the “Zuva moment” was not only about termination on notice. It exposed a deeper vulnerability: the worker’s dependence on institutional goodwill in a context where rules can be stretched, selectively enforced, or weaponised.
That vulnerability is what many employees say they now encounter in disciplinary processes—where suspension becomes the punishment, the hearing becomes theatre, and the employer’s resources become the employee’s disadvantage.
Consider how suspension alone can be deployed as a form of punishment even before guilt is established. Zimbabwean jurisprudence has grappled with this tension.
In CIMAS Medical Aid Society v Tapiwa Nyandoro (SC 6/2016), the Supreme Court dealt with questions about an employee’s rights during suspension and the consequences when misconduct allegations fail.
The case is often cited precisely because it highlights how easily procedure can drift into unfairness if employers treat suspension as a default weapon rather than a careful, time-bound administrative measure.
The human cost of these power games is rarely reflected in the remedies available. In many disputes, the “best-case scenario” after a long legal fight is reinstatement and back pay, which—while important—often arrives after the damage has already been done.
This is why workers frequently describe winning at the end of a case as “justice that comes too late”.
A parent may be reinstated, but the lost school term is not restored. Rent arrears do not vanish because a judgment eventually arrives.
Stress-related illness does not unwind itself because a letter of reinstatement is issued.
Zimbabwe has seen the real-world ripple effects of contested dismissals and restructurings in high-profile settings, including aviation.
In 2017, for example, reports indicated that the Labour Court had ordered Air Zimbabwe to reinstate hundreds of employees or pay compensation, illustrating how labour disputes can become protracted battles that shape lives and institutions for years.
Even years later, litigation and appeals linked to post-Zuva labour upheavals continued to surface in public reporting, reinforcing how long these disputes can linger.
The burden is worsened by inequality of arms. Managers prosecute disciplinary cases using company resources—legal departments, internal audit, and HR—while the accused worker must fund representation, transport, and documentation privately, often while income has been interrupted.
Where the dispute escalates, the worker is also fighting time. Legal delays become an unofficial strategy because survival pressures force many to abandon claims or accept weak settlements.
This is where Zimbabwe’s labour remedies begin to look thin.
The logic of “reinstatement plus back pay” assumes that employment is the only loss that matters. Yet even Zimbabwean legal commentary recognises that back pay is a concept tied to reinstatement, and that where reinstatement is not granted, damages are usually assessed with reference to lost earnings—often limited by what the employee could have earned with reasonable diligence elsewhere.
That framing is practical, but it can also be blind to broader harm when the underlying conduct was malicious or reckless.
Other jurisdictions have increasingly treated dismissal harms more expansively, not always by being more generous, but by being more explicit about compensation frameworks and enforcement.
In the United Kingdom, for example, unfair dismissal remedies are shaped by statutory limits, and the compensatory award is capped (for 2025/26, reported at £118 223 under updated limits).
The cap itself is controversial—so controversial that recent UK political debate has centred on whether to abolish it—yet the key point is that the compensation architecture is openly codified and regularly updated, and public debate is explicitly about what justice should cost.
South Africa offers another instructive contrast. Its Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) processes an enormous volume of disputes annually with the CCMA reporting 188 619 referrals in 2023/24.
Crucially, the CCMA has reported that unfair dismissal matters accounted for 52% of all referrals in that same period—an indicator not only of workplace conflict, but of how central termination disputes are to labour justice.
The scale matters because it normalises the idea that employment disputes are a routine governance problem requiring constant institutional capacity, not an occasional inconvenience to be handled informally by managerial discretion.
Zimbabwe’s own justice system has also been dealing with volume and backlog pressures, though aggregated court statistics often blur the specific labour picture.
For instance, in 2023, the judiciary reportedly received 29,433 cases and disposed of 30,560 across courts, with commentary highlighting backlog reduction efforts.
Even if this is system-wide, it reinforces an important reality for labour disputes: delays are structural, not accidental, and they shape the practical meaning of “remedy”.
Against that background, the most dangerous gap is the one workers quietly describe: the absence of consequences for bad-faith discipline.
If a manager engineers a charge to punish an employee, the employer’s worst outcome is often reinstatement and back pay.
There is rarely a meaningful deterrent for malice, reputational harm, mental distress, or the downstream damage to family stability.
That imbalance is exactly what turns power into a weapon—it makes abuse cheap.
This is where Zimbabwe should have a more serious conversation about intersecting labour remedies with broader civil accountability. Delict exists precisely because wrongful conduct causes harm that can be proven and quantified.
Zimbabweans accept this logic in road traffic accidents and medical negligence.
The question is why workplace wrongdoing—especially malicious suspension or dismissal—so often escapes that wider accountability conversation, even when harm is foreseeable, and the conduct is arguably intentional.
None of this is an argument against discipline. Zimbabwean workplaces do face real misconduct: fraud, absenteeism, sabotage, harassment, and negligence.
But a credible disciplinary system must be built to separate genuine accountability from vendetta.
The present complaint from workers is not that discipline exists; it is that, in too many institutions, discipline can be bent by those who control the process.
The national cost is also real. Labour conflicts consume organisational time, legal budgets, and productivity.
In parastatals, these costs ultimately land on the public.
A disciplinary vendetta in a State enterprise is not merely an “HR issue”; it becomes a governance issue because it channels public resources toward private grudges, corrodes morale, and entrenches fear-based workplaces.
Zimbabwe needs stronger deterrence against bad-faith discipline, faster and more accessible dispute resolution, and remedies that reflect lived harm rather than narrow employment status.
Labour unions and civic actors can push strategic litigation; policymakers can clarify penalties for malicious process abuse; and boards—especially in parastatals—can insist on independent oversight of disciplinary pathways.
Without real consequences for abuse, power will keep finding ways to weaponise procedure.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position, editorial policy or views of this media house, its management or its affiliates.
