Police in Zimbabwe continued demolishing thousands of shacks and vendors’ kiosks in opposition strongholds on Monday, burning a 10km-long line of curio stalls along the road near Victoria Falls.
A spokesperson for the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) called the crackdown a ”tyranny” and urged people to resist.
Lawyers for the party sought a court order on Monday that banned police from demolishing shacks and kiosks, and demanding compensation for the owners of buildings already destroyed in what the government calls a campaign to clean up the cities.
Thousands of street traders have been arrested and their wares seized or destroyed since the May 19 start of the crackdown, which the government has described as an urban renewal campaign. Police using torches, sledgehammers and bulldozers have also burned and demolished the homes of the urban poor in informal settlements around the country.
”A government that destroys the property of people who are trying to make an honest living is evil,” MDC spokesperson Paul Themba-Nyathi said on Monday after a session of the main opposition party’s national council.
”We call on all Zimbabweans to mobilise against this assault on their dignity, livelihoods and well-being,” said Themba-Nyathi, defying tough new security laws that provide a 20-year prison term for anyone trying to ”coerce” President Robert Mugabe’s government.
”We shall overcome this tyranny,” he said.
Over the weekend, residents in some informal settlements put boulders across a maze of side roads in a futile attempt to keep police and security forces out. However, there were no reports of rioting in any of the townships where police demolished and burned shacks.
In the resort town of Victoria Falls, police burned a 10km-long line of curio stalls and claimed to have confiscated a large amount of stolen or illegally imported goods.
In the eastern city of Mutare, police said they arrested an American, identified as Howard Smith Gilman, under media laws for allegedly covering the destruction of 9 000 illegal structures there. Zimbabwe’s media laws make it illegal to operate without a licence.
MDC legislator Trudi Stevenson said in the preceding 24 hours, police had ”at gunpoint” forced 2 000 more people in Hatcliffe township in northern Harare to destroy their houses and leave. On Friday and Saturday, 7 000 were evicted, although they had lease agreements issued by Mugabe’s government.
”The people are homeless and sleeping in the open,” she said.
Many were trying to salvage building materials in the hope they would be allocated other plots.
Harare’s government-appointed mayor Sekesai Makwavarara last week gave dwellers in the city’s myriad backyard shacks until July to vacate, citing health grounds. About half the city’s poor live in such shacks. The government has not explained why it began demolitions before the July deadline. — Sapa-AP