June 27, 2008 (LPAC)--The Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA) is a Johannesburg-based foundation established in 1997, working in Angola, Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The OSISA's Director for Zimbabwe is Godfrey Kanyanze. He has long served as the Director of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU). He was the lead person in the development of ZCTU's alleged alternative framework to Zimbabwe's Structural Adjustment Program in the late 1990s. He has also served on the board of the Zimbabwe Non-State Actors' Forum.

The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) obtains funding from the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy via the American Center for International Labor Solidarity. ZTCU was formerly headed by opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai. ZCTU is the main trade union federation in Zimbabwe. The general secretary of ZCTU is Wellington Chibebe and the president is Lovemore Matombo; they are currently incarcerated awaiting trial in Zimbabwe.

ZCTU was formed in 1981 through the merger of six trade union confederations. In the 1990s ZCTU increasingly opposed the government of Robert Mugabe, and was the main force behind the formation of the Movement For Democratic Change.

The American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS), better known as the Solidarity Center, was established in 1997 by the AFL-CIO. The Solidarity Center was created through the consolidation of four labor institutes: the notorious American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), the Asian-American Free Labor Institute, the African-American Labor Center, and the Free Trade Union Institute. Its stated mission is to help build a global labor movement by strengthening the economic and political power of workers around the world through effective, independent, and democratic unions. It is known critically as the fountainhead of "labor imperialism."