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HARARE, 21 Jul 2005 (IRIN) - The
physical evidence of the scale of destruction in Zimbabwe's informal settlements
is plain to see: row upon row of what were once the homes of the urban poor
demolished by government bulldozers or the bare hands of the residents on the
orders of the police.
What is less clear are the numbers of people
affected nationwide by Operation Murambatsvina ('Clean Out Garbage') -
colloquially known more evocatively as "the tsunami".
Since it began in
the capital, Harare, in mid-May, the humanitarian community in Zimbabwe
estimates that 75,000 households have been struck - a total of around 375,000
people. The figures are based on assessments by churches and the Zimbabwe Red
Cross, who are providing limited assistance to the displaced.
The
government's figures are more confusing: overall numbers affected are put at
133,000 households, which would translate to 665,000 individuals; but when the
figures presented for each province are calculated, the total number of
households falls to 85,000, or 425,000 people.
Operation Murambatsvina
began as a blitz on unlicensed street markets and traders "to rid the capital of
illegal structures, businesses and criminal activities". It quickly expanded to
encompass unapproved housing and illegal extensions to homes owned or rented by
the poor across the country, with armed police deployed to enforce eviction
orders and government officials insisting that the victims return to their rural
home areas.
MY NEW HOME IS A TENT
Beyond the numbers are the
individual tragedies of people swept away by the suddenness and scale of the
operation. Four weeks on, 34-year-old Oscar Mutume*, a former security guard and
father of three, was still visibly shaken by the experience, and concern for his
family's future.
He had been living in Hatcliffe Extension, 20 km north
of Harare, a settlement that had received the official blessing of the
government, with a water supply system funded by the World Bank. It had "decent
shelter, toilets, a clinic, shops and was near the bus terminus", said
Mutume.
Hatcliffe was established in 1993, when the government settled
people evicted a year earlier from the farm of an opposition leader who had
allocated them free stands. Residents were granted stands and leases from 2000
onward, but because some were unable to afford permanent structures and
connection to services, the authorities deemed them illegal - even though most
of the homeowners had been paying fees to the city council.
For the past
three weeks Mutume's home has been a two-by-two metre hovel made of donated
plastic sheeting at Caledonia Farm, a holding camp for the displaced 15 km east
of Harare. His children are out of school, he fears the authorities may force
him to move again and, after missing the monthly distribution of relief food by
the World Food Programme, his own small supply of pumpkins and maize-meal is
running out.
"I'm not settled in my mind," said Mutume, arms crossed,
head bowed. When the police first came to Hatcliffe Extension they told
residents to remove the roofing and wooden sidings from their homes, which they
burnt. For a week Mutume and his family slept out in the open, in the cold of
mid-winter, until the police returned. "They said 'We don't want to see anybody
here', and put us on a transport and drove us here."
He was forced to
sell some of his belongings at knockdown prices, but still frets over the goods,
like his plastic sheeting, that he had to leave behind. To an unemployed
security guard this represents an investment, and he insists he will not leave
Harare without it.
More than 4,500 people shelter on the sloping farmland
of Caledonia, many of them originally from Hatcliffe. Some have been there for
as long as a month - in what was supposed to be a transit stop lasting only a
few days - relying on basic services supplied by the UN and NGOs, including
food, water, sanitation and blankets.
On Thursday the Minister of Local
Government Ignatius Chombo, and Minister of State for Policy Implementation
Webster Shamu, visited Caledonia and announced the camp would close. Those with
lease agreements at Hatcliffe, or had been allotted stands at new government
developments, had been paying dues to registered housing cooperatives, or could
prove they had jobs in Harare, would be allowed to return to their communities.
Everybody else would be removed to their rural areas.
"Those people from
Hatcliffe are going back to a worse situation - not only have their houses been
destroyed, but also the services. What about the water? What about the
sanitation?" asked one aid worker. The demolition at Hatcliffe included an
orphanage and an AIDS centre.
While Caledonia appears set to close, the
police in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second city, raided church compounds on Wednesday
night where 300 displaced were sheltering, and transported them to the official
holding camp at Hellensvale.
In Mutare and Odzi in
eastern Manicaland, the police were also this week clearing former commercial
farm labourers who had squatted on land belonging to newly settled farmers,
humanitarian officials said.
Not far from Caledonia is Belapezi Farm, a
new section of Epworth, an established settlement on church land that had
existed before independence. In 2001 the commercial farm was taken over by
ruling party supporters encouraged by the government as part of its
controversial land reform programme, and stands were distributed through a
housing cooperative.
It is extremely cold in the evenings and when IRIN
visited, Bertina Ndlovu was sheltering behind a low wall built from salvaged
bricks, warming herself by a small fire, a nine-month-old baby strapped to her
back. It was dark and eerily quiet; Ndlovu said she was a little scared as her
husband, with a job in town, would not be back until around 8.00 pm, "depending
on transport" - a reference to the country's crippling fuel
shortages.
There were 500 families at Belapezi, but only 350 have hung on
since the police ordered the demolition of their houses on 16 June. "We have no
alternative place to live - this is our home - we have never been established in
the rural areas," she said.
Ndlovu, a young woman in her twenties,
explained that the police had initially ordered them to leave the area, "but
then we heard we could stay, and wait and see what the housing cooperative could
do ... We'll leave this place only after being told of a final decision on
whether we'll be given alternative accommodation".
The official rationale
for Operation Murambatsvina was that unplanned and illegal housing had placed an
enormous burden on water and sewerage systems, and were a health hazard.
President Robert Mugabe told parliament in June the "vigorous cleanup campaign"
was to restore "sanity and order in urban and other areas".
Lawyer and
opposition shadow economic minister Tendai Biti countered that the programme was
an attack on the poor, made no sense in an economy with only 20 percent formal
employment, and was illegal in Zimbabwean law.
Although an injunction to
halt the demolitions was rejected by a high court judge, Biti insisted that the
evictions clearly flouted legal requirements obliging local authorities to apply
to a housing court for an eviction order, and ignored the tenants' right of
appeal.
According to the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, many of those
whose homes had been destroyed held valid lease agreements. Eyewitnesses told
IRIN that in some instances the police had not consulted city-planning maps and
had ordered the demolition of property at their own
discretion.
ACCOMMODATION CRISIS OF URBAN POOR
Zimbabwe, with a
population of 11.5 million, has a housing backlog of around 2 million units. In
2002 the Harare city council had a waiting list of 300,000, with people expected
to renew their application each year.
But acquiring a stand is not the
end of the problem for the urban poor, analysts point out. Interest rates are
around 200 percent, building permission requires paying for costly architectural
plans, while proper construction materials are extremely expensive.
As a
result, the hard-up have taken to living where they can: illegal extensions to
existing property rented out per room; crowded backyard shacks and brick-built
"cottages".
The authorities had "previously done little to enforce the
building by-laws in relation to these informal settlements", said a report on
Operation Murambatsvina by the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum.
Along
with turning a blind eye to building code infringements, the government had also
tolerated the informal sector as Zimbabwe's economic decline accelerated from
the late 90s. Some of the markets razed and torched by the police - which had
provided livelihoods for many of those now displaced - had previously been
opened by government officials.
Harare has more than 10 major informal
settlements. According to the Combined Harare Residents Association, prior to
the cleanup, over half of the city's estimated three million residents were
living in makeshift accommodation.
One of the oldest informal settlements
is Porta Farm, 18 km west of the city centre, and home to some of Zimbabwe's
poorest and most vulnerable citizens.
It was meant to have been a
temporary camp for accommodating the homeless cleared out of the capital by the
image-conscious authorities when Queen Elizabeth II visited Harare to open the
Commonwealth Heads of State and Government Meeting in 1991.
Fourteen
years later, the 7,500 residents have still not been officially recognised as a
community, compounding their squalor: there are no government-run health
facilities, electricity or piped water; instead, NGOs provide basic
services.
More than half the households affected by the government's
demolition between 27 and 29 June are still living out in the open amid the
wreckage of their homes; some have taken to burrowing into the clay soil as
protection from the cold and rain. The area looks like the aftermath of urban
combat.
Regardless of the conditions, community leader Felistas Chinuku
said she was staying put at Porta Farm. The community had won two court orders
in 1995 and 2004 against their eviction and, through Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human
Rights, was now suing the police commissioner and the authorities for damages
arising out of the destruction of the settlement.
"We're staying here
until they give us homes," she said firmly.
IMPACT ON THE
VULNERABLE
The response by people affected by Operation Murambatsvina
has, inevitably, been mixed. Some have preferred to stay put in their
neighbourhoods, hoping the government will change its policy, or are unable to
afford transport; others have moved in with family and friends, or found
alternative accommodation and are prepared to pay the inflated rents demanded by
landlords.
An unknown number have gone back to what officials insist
every Zimbabwean should have - a rural home.
But, like many other
Zimbabweans, 25-year-old Tabitha Mbayi does not have roots in the rural areas.
She was born in Harare, lived in Hatcliffe, and her parents are with her in
Caledonia Farm where her second child, Kudakwashi (God's will), was born two
weeks ago.
She does have grandparents in Morewa, 60 km northeast of
Harare, but doesn't think they would welcome her family, as the rural areas are
struggling to cope with yet another poor harvest that threatens 4.5 million
people with hunger.
And there is another problem: the grandparents would
expect her to stay with her husband's relatives, and although he was also born
in Harare, his parents were originally from Malawi, a common genealogy in a
region with historically strong migration patterns.
An assessment by the
UN in conjunction with the government and NGOs to determine the humanitarian
impact of the forced evictions finally began this week. Five locations in
Harare, Bulawayo, Victoria Falls, Mutare and Kariba were chosen to gauge
conditions and map potential needs.
The assessment follows a two-week
visit this month by the UN Secretary General's Special Envoy, Anna Tibaijuka,
who has presented her report to Kofi Annan. UN spokesperson Marie Okabe said on
Monday: "The Secretary-General is increasingly concerned by the human rights and
humanitarian impact of the recent demolitions of what the government of Zimbabwe
has called 'illegal settlements'."
In Zimbabwe the humanitarian community
is especially alarmed at the impact of the demolitions on the vulnerable -
child-headed households, the elderly, the infirm and people infected with
HIV.
According to one NGO helping with rural orphans, although the most
direct impact of Operation Murambatsvina has been felt in urban areas, there has
been a ripple effect in the countryside.
"Particularly on access to
education," noted an aid worker, who asked not to be named. "Children often go
to school in urban or peri-urban areas and lodge there during the week.
Inevitably the lodging is in cheap accommodation, which has been
affected."
REVERSING AIDS PREVENTION GAINS
In Zimbabwe 21 percent
of the adult population is HIV positive, down from 25 percent in 2003. While the
destruction by the police of the AIDS centre in Hatcliffe, which helped 600
people, dramatically underlined the plight of those living with the virus, for
most Zimbabweans the HIV/AIDS repercussions of the forced removals will be more
insidious.
Bertha Matema, 45, is HIV-positive and a volunteer home-based
care worker at The Centre, an HIV/AIDS NGO with 4,500 registered clients. She
had lived in Westlea, 7 km west of Harare, but has now moved to Dzivaresekwa,
further out of the city, after being homeless for the past month.
Of the
11 people she was responsible for in the Westlea area, she can only trace six,
and because of the distance she has to travel from Dzivaresekwa, is no longer
able to keep in contact. Bertha said she was suffering from stress and high
blood pressure - major accelerators of the virus. "It's like killing people;
it's like finishing them off."
Lynde Francis, who runs The Centre, is in
no doubt that, as a result of the clean-up campaign, successes made in fighting
HIV/AIDS will be irrevocably set back.
"We will see an increase in
prevalence, an increase in mortality, an increase in resistance to the virus,
and we will see a lot more violence against girls and women - it's already
happening: husbands beating up their wives because they allowed their houses or
tuck shops to be destroyed."
Around 8,000 Zimbabweans are on treatment -
6,000 through a free public programme. The most widely used first-line
antiretroviral (ARV) drug regimen is the generic combination therapy, Triomune,
which is sensitive to treatment interruption. If a patient becomes resistant to
Triomune, the second-line regimen is four times the cost.
In the rural
areas the health services are understaffed, under-resourced and struggle to
provide even basic care, Francis noted. ARVs, which require treatment support
and a full stomach, are unavailable.
"The main thing [about the clean-up]
is that girls are going to be very much more vulnerable now, and the only thing
they have to sell is sex," she said. "They are going to accept less payment and
accept no condoms because they are desperate."
ATTACK ON THE
OPPOSITION?
While the government has framed Operation Murambatsvina
solely in terms of urban regeneration, its critics insist that its goal has been
primarily political.
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)
alleges that it was designed to destroy the party's urban support base, relocate
people to the rural areas where they would be under the sway of ruling
party-aligned chiefs, and forestall popular protest by the poor as the food
crisis deepens.
However, there have been reports of chiefs not wanting to
accept the displaced, given the increasing hardships in the countryside, while
settlements occupied by former war veterans - staunch ZANU-PF supporters who led
the land invasions and represent the radical wing of the party - were also
demolished in the cleanup.
Some analysts have suggested that the attack
on the informal sector was the result of the government's determination to kill
the parallel market and mop up the foreign currency it so desperately
needs.
If that were the case, it would be a huge misreading of the
significance of the informal sector, said Biti. It is generally agreed that the
parallel market used to generate 35 percent of GDP, but the MDC shadow minister
suggested the real figure could by now be 60 percent - almost
double.
"What's really been supporting the economy has been the informal
sector," he said. "They should have regularised it."
Sam Moyo, director
of the African Institute for Agrarian Studies, widely regarded as close to the
government, has written a paper offering an alternative reading of Operation
Murambatsvina.
Although "on the face of it, it was a mess, it shouldn't
have happened", he sees the cleanup as the response to three interlinked goals:
the reassertion of state authority and the reigning in of radical elements
within the party; the regulation of the economy and a crackdown on corruption;
and the restoration of functioning services to the cities.
"There was a
misreading of the effect, and the execution snowballs into this militaristic
thing," he said.
At the end of June the government announced the end of
Murambatsvina and the launch of a Zim $3 trillion (US $300 million) Operation
Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle ('Stay well') to accommodate the people affected by the
cleanup, and construct factory shells and market stalls.
The official
Herald newspaper reported that 10,000 housing stands would be developed at White
Cliff Farm - which the government expropriated after the owner objected - and
had 62 other farms ready for housing development.
But why
Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle was not launched before Operation Murambatsvina as part of
a strategic programme for low-cost housing and urban renewal, and where the
government intends to source the funding for the project, are issues that have
been seized on by its detractors.
"In the face of multiple statements
condemning events in Zimbabwe, the government now talks hurriedly of vast sums
for housing; even if the money were in fact to materialise - and there is no
reflection in the existing parliamentary approved budgets that the money is
there - it will take years of work to build sufficient houses for the
displaced," said a report by Solidarity Peace Trust, an NGO representing
Southern African church leaders.
* Certain names have been
changed