The government threatened on Tuesday to demolish squatter shacks in what it calls an urban beautification campaign, following the arrests of about 10 000 street traders in the capital, a stronghold of the opposition.
The announcement of ”Operation Marambatsvina,” which means ”drive out rubbish,” following the four-day police blitz against vendors and flea market traders left the opposition accusing the ruling Zanu-PF party of trying to provoke confrontations so it can declare a State of Emergency before the tattered state of the economy leads to riots.
The campaign against vendors has already sparked clashes between traders and police and unrest has been reported elsewhere.
”They are now going for broke,” said Paul Themba-Nyathi, spokesperson for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. ”It is obvious these are all punitive measures aimed at urban people who voted against Zanu-PF.”
In the Harare cleanup campaign, the government set a June 20 deadline for demolishing unauthorised buildings unless the residents appeal and receive a grace period.
”The attitude of the members of the public as well as some city officials has led to the point whereby Harare has lost its glow. We are determined to get it back,” said government-appointed Mayor Sekesai Makwavara in a statement announcing the deadline.
She said ”Operation Marambatsvina” would see the demolition of all ”illegal structures”.
Lovemore Madhuku, a university teacher who leads an umbrella group of bodies seeking radical reform, the National Constitutional Assembly, warned the demolitions might ignite public anger on a scale unseen since 1980 independence, when President Robert Mugabe, now 81, gained power.
”I think now people are really going to react,” he said.
The cleanup ultimatum revives memories of the 1985 elections when Zanu-PF mobs, reacting to comments by Mugabe, expelled thousands of families suspected of supporting the opposition out of their township homes until the bought ruling party cards. An unknown number of people were killed while police refused to intervene.
Township resident Petros Nyoni said the mood in Harare’s sprawling ”high density suburbs” was tense on Tuesday, with workers already angry at a police crackdown on the commuter minibuses that are the mainstay of the transport system.
Hundreds of the taxis have been grounded by lack of fuel at filling stations while many more have been impounded at roadblocks for allegedly being unfit to drive.
”There is a very big crisis. People are so desperate they are jumping through [minibus] windows or onto the roof carriers,” he said.
After seven years of unprecedented economic decline, 80% of the workforce is unemployed and four million of Zimbabwe’s 16-million people have emigrated.
Agriculture, once the mainstay, has been hard hit by Mugabe’s seizure of 5 000 white-owned farms for redistribution to blacks.
The government last week announced a 45% devaluation of the Zimbabwean currency against the United States dollar, a ban on luxury imports and heavy subsidies for agriculture and exporters.
Michael Davies, chairperson of the Combined Harare Residents Association, said more than half of the capital’s population of two million to three million people live in housing marked for demolition.
He said in some cases rents from the buildings were the only means of survival for elderly owners.
Many of the houses marked for demolition date from the 1970s when the embattled white Rhodesian authorities stopped enforcing hated ”influx control” laws to allow fugitives from rural fighting into towns.
”They [Zanu-PF] are trying to remake the city in their image by trying to drive people out, depriving them of their livelihoods and homes, back to the communal areas where Zanu-PF is better able to control social unrest, said Davies.
”There is very little we can do. The country is in the grip of a dictatorship. A clique has seized the state through lawlessness and this rogue regime doesn’t give a damn for legal niceties,” said Davies. ‒ Sapa-AP