The new ICFTU President agrees with Juan Somavia, the President of ILO, that the trade union movement should change its method of working, whilst nevertheless maintaining its traditional values. - 'We at ICFTU are currently drafting a new millennium agenda for the organisation and I expect that we shall be able to find new ways for combating the changes, in the nature of jobs and production, which we shall have to face. I also expect that we shall be able to link social fairness to globalisation', he said.

How will this new broom perform at ICFTU? Mr. Shamenda may put the brakes on the publication of some declarations. He says emphatically that in its present form the organisation is far too bureaucratic. - 'The President of ICFTU could be likened to the captain of a football team. It is his job to advance the team effort. He will listen to the various views and opinions and will draw up the policies of ICFTU on the basis of these, whilst endeavouring to ensure that all the affiliated unions, with their varying levels of resources and activities, remain in the folds of the organisation and continue to exert their influences on its work.'

The ICFTU Presidency is held in turn by the different continents. It had been said that Etsuya Washlo, the leader of Rengo in Japan, had shown an interest in the Presidency but had given up the idea for lack of support, so that the baton was on this occasion passed from LeRoy Trotman of Latin America to Fackson Shamenda of Africa. - 'The Presidency now being bestowed upon Africa, for the first time in the 50 year history of ICFTU, is both a challenge and an acknowledgement of our achievements.' Mr. Shamenda believes that the present position of Africa, at the very hub of the international trade union movement, will also have an effect on the internal affairs of the various African countries.

Well-versed in the major problems of the trade union movement

In Mr. Shamenda, ICFTU has acquired a president who is familiar, in practice, with all the core problems, and threats, with which the trade union movement has had to contend on a world wide basis.

It was in his native Zambia, with a population of some 10 million people, and where democracy cannot be said to be more than ten years old, that Mr Shamenda himself participated in the fight for freedom.

As a country, Zambia is extremely poor with 80 per cent of the population having less than a dollar a day spending power. Unemployment is approaching some 60 per cent and over half a million people have drifted into menial jobs and into participating in the bazaar economy.

South African capitalised companies, and other multinationals, are governing the Zambian trade and its industry. Factories are being purchased with the sole objective of asset stripping whilst public utilities are being sold off to the private sector.

Into the President's Shoes

Mr. Shamenda, who is a telecommunications engineer by profession, has been involved with the trade union movement for 30 years, and has usually been involved whenever the going has got rough. He started off as the regional secretary of the national telecommunication workers' union in Zambia in the early 1970's and rose to the union leadership during the 1980's. This was followed by various international posts in the telecommunications sector, of which the most recent was his position within UNI, which is the new, worldwide union of trade, communication and teleworkers, as its General Secretary for Africa. He was elected to the ICFTU Executive Council and Steering Committee as long ago as 1992, during the Caracas Congress.

He had only one year earlier become the President of ZCTU, the Zambian Central Organisation of Trade Unions, which has some 250,000 members. His rise to the leadership followed some dramatic events. In the early 1990's Zambia was in the midst of a political power struggle. At that time, the dictatorship of President Kenneth Kaunda was challenged by Frederick Chiluba, who was then the President of the ZCTU. Frederick Chiluba won the struggle and he thus became the President of Zambia, whilst Mr. Chiluba's chair at the ZCTU was then in turn inherited by Mr. Shamenda.