Authorities in Zimbabwe’s capital who have destroyed thousands of market stalls as part of a clean-up campaign are now planning to rid Harare of backyard shacks housing tens of thousands of people, a spokesperson said on Tuesday.
Operation Restore Order has led to the arrest of nearly 10 000 people, mostly street vendors, in what authorities have described as a clampdown on crime in the city of more than two million people.
”We are with immediate effect dealing with all illegal structures,” Harare municipality spokesperson Leslie Gwindi said.
Most of the houses in the capital’s working-class suburbs have set up the makeshift dwellings on their properties, leasing them out to pad their earnings and to respond to the demand for housing arising from urban migration.
”All those are not planned and we will not have a shantytown,” Gwindi said.
Tens of thousands of city dwellers are expected to be rendered homeless if the shacks are destroyed.
Last week, police alongside municipal officials descended on vendors and other informal traders in market areas, destroying their stalls and arresting nearly 10 000 people who were fined and released.
Police have collected the equivalent of about R651 000 in fines from the traders, police spokesperson Oliver Mandipaka was quoted as saying in the state-run Herald newspaper.
Head of Harare municipality Sekesai Makwavarara was quoted by the Herald as saying that the exercise is aimed at bringing ”sanity” back to the capital city by taking aim at ”all forms of illegal activities”.
She described Operation Restore Order as ”massive”, saying it will lead to ”the demolition of all illegal structures and removal of activities at undesignated areas”.
”It is not a one-off exercise but a sustained one that will see the clean-up of Harare,” she said.
Rights organisations have condemned the action as unjustified and noted that many Zimbabweans are depending on street vending for a living, given the dire economic situation in the country.
”We all agree that we need a clean city, but this has been a wanton raid, unjustified,” the director of the rights group Zimright, Munyaradzi Bidi, said.
”The informal sector has been the answer for many families who are trying to earn a living through honest means, and therefore raiding and confiscation of goods is brutal and turning a blind eye to the current economic realities,” said Bidi.
But police said the flea markets are fuelling crime.
”We noticed there was a lot of black-marketeering that was going on under the disguise of flea markets as well as illegal vending and setting up of illegal structures,” said Mandipaka.
”We felt it was high time we stopped this and bring sanity back to our cities. This operation will continue until we are convinced order has been restored and there is no need to bring in myths and misconceptions,” he said.
Zimbabwe has been in the throes of an economic meltdown for the past five years, with unemployment unofficially estimated at close to 70%. — Sapa-AFP