Zimbabwean church representatives on Sunday denounced the week-long crackdown against street traders and shack dwellers, while police continued arrests and demolition work.
In the capital’s crowded southern townships, residents were reportedly putting boulders across roads to hinder access. But no fresh incidents of stone throwing were reported after residents last week fought running battles with security forces, who pulled down slums and made thousands of people homeless in the midwinter cold.
In a statement, the National Pastors Conference, representing over 100 Christian ministers, demanded President Robert Mugabe’s government ”engage in a war against poverty and not against the poor”.
They accused the authorities of ”displaying lack of compassion in the face of human suffering and misery”, with police squads singing ”the destroyers have arrived” as they blitzed urban settlements that allegedly lacked planning permission.
The Roman Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, the Human Rights Trust of Southern Africa and university lecturers joined the condemnation.
Opposition lawmaker Trudi Stevenson said police had moved into other sections of the Hatcliffe township in her northern Harare constituency, where 500 families have already been made homeless despite having lease agreements issued in 2002 by Housing Minister Ignatius Chombo. Residents are not resisting but are attempting to salvage building materials, furniture and belongings, fearing bulldozers would move in.
”They [the police] go in with this massive force of 3 000, and if you are only 300 or 500 people or so, without weapons, and they are armed, you cannot resist,” she said.
”In the closer knit high density areas people are resisting, but police have now been deployed there.”
The National Pastors Conference accused the government of ”randomly destroying sources of livelihood for the urban poor” who were encouraged to begin street trading by the economic liberalisation policy Mugabe adopted in 1991.
”Are we now to believe that these people were misled by the same sitting government that has now mercilessly turned against them?” asked the pastors.
Current 80% unemployment among Zimbabwe’s 11,6-million people, shortages of all basic commodities and rampant hyper-inflation are dehumanising and compromising human dignity, they said.
”We need informed policy action, not police action, in order to make life bearable for the poor.”
The privately owned Sunday Standard reported that the southern Glen View township ”resembled a graveyard” after weeklong battles between armed police and street traders, roadside kiosk and workshop owners, and shack dwellers whose homes and businesses were torched or bulldozed.
The national council of the opposition Moverment for Democratic Change met at the weekend and ”resolved to defend the rights of the people”.
A formal statement and announcement of court action is expected on Monday.
Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has accused Mugabe (81) of aiming to break the spirit of Zimbabweans ahead of imminent economic collapse, and drive the urban poor back into the rural areas where they can be controlled by denial of access to food.
Over the weekend, the price of maize meal, the staple of Zimbabweans’ diet, was increased by 51% and bread prices by 29%.
Nationwide food riots in 1998 claimed seven lives after Mugabe deployed troops, backed by tanks and helicopters.
The government mouthpiece, The Sunday Mail, defended the action.
”The fact that the president has thrown his weight behind the clean-up must mean it is a well thought out programme,” the newspaper said in an editorial.
World Food Programme Director James Morris is scheduled to arrive this week for talks with Mugabe on the humanitarian crisis, but was warned there must be ”no political conditionality”.
The country urgently needs to import 1,2-million metric tonnes of maize to avert the threat of famine to four million people. – Sapa-AP