Continuing Violence against Shackdwellers in Zimbabwe

ZimOnline has announced the following. It continues the violence of Operation Murambatsvina (Operation ‘clean up trash’), directed against shackdwellers there.

From Zim Online (SA), 7 November

Mugabe plans fresh home demolitions

Harare – The Zimbabwe government is planning fresh home demolitions,
just a little over a year after a similar campaign to destroy
shantytowns and city backyard cottages left at least 700 000 people
without shelter or means of livelihood. The government in May last
year and weeks after controversially winning a key general election,
ordered the police and army to demolish thousands of backyard
cottages, shantytowns and informal business kiosks, in a campaign
President Robert Mugabe said was necessary to smash crime and to
restore the beauty of Zimbabwe’s cities. In addition to those left
homeless, another 2.4 million people were indirectly affected by the
military-style demolition exercise to bring the total number of
victims to about three million or a quarter of Zimbabwe’s 12 million
people. Authoritative sources told Zim Online that Local Government
Minister Ignatius Chombo, who oversaw last year’s widely-condemned
demolition exercise, had set up a task force comprising officials from
his department and the police to lay out the groundwork for a new
offensive against slum dwellers and informal traders. “There is some
kind of a brigade that is being set up within the police specifically
for that mission (to carry out demolitions),” said a senior official
in the Ministry of Local Government, who did not want to be named
because he did not have clearance from Chombo to speak to the Press.
“New illegal structures have come up since Operation Murambatsvina
(the official codename for last year’s clean-up campaign). We will
target these structures that have sprouted up and others that somehow
survived the first Murambatsvina,” said the official.

Chombo confirmed the government was planning new home demolitions but
said these would be on a much smaller scale than Murambatsvina. He
said: “It is not Murambatsvina. But the spirit of Murambatsvina should
not die. To ensure that we don’t reverse the gains of Murambatsvina we
will do regular follow-ups. We cannot just watch while chaos prevails
and people build wherever they want.” The government, bowing to
international pressure after the home demolitions, announced in August
last year that it was launching a new re-construction programme to
build houses for people whose homes it had destroyed. But only a
handful of houses have been built because the government – which is
also battling to raise cash to import food, electricity and fuel among
other key national requirements – did not have resources. And
thousands of homeless families have tracked back to the sites of their
former shantytowns to rebuild their shacks after the government failed
to provide the homes it promised under the new home- building exercise
dubbed Operation Garikayi/Hlalani kuhle or Operation Live Well.
Rodrick Chinyau, who appeared to be the leader of about 30 families
squatting in Epworth near Harare, said: “We have nowhere to go. The
government destroyed our houses last year forcing us to come here. The
number of people here is increasing everyday and this will be the case
until we get decent accommodation.” Chinyau however said officials
from Chombo’s department had visited the settlement and gave the
families up to the end of this week to vacate or be forcibly removed.

ZWNews.com