Three weeks after Zimbabwe launched an unpopular urban clean-up drive that has drawn widespread criticism and made thousands homeless and destitute in the height of winter, authorities on Wednesday widened the crackdown to previously white-owned farms now in the hands of blacks.
Newly settled farmers at two farms on the outskirts of Harare — Lowdale and Chitamba — were ”ordered” by police to vacate their properties by Wednesday, the state-run daily Herald said.
Police spokesperson Wayne Bvudzijena said the farms have been earmarked for ”peri-urban” housing settlements.
Black settlers moved to the two farms in 2000 when the government embarked on a land-reform programme by driving away white farmers and redistributing their properties to landless blacks, saying it was to correct colonial-era imbalances in land ownership.
Witnesses at Lowdale farm reported increased activity, with farmers frantically trying to harvest their corn before the police moved in.
The operation, dubbed Restore Order or Clean Out Trash, was initially interpreted by some commentators as retribution against the urban electorate for having voted for the opposition in the March parliamentary elections.
But supporters of President Robert Mugabe’s government also saw their homes demolished and the crackdown has now been extended to some rural areas, where illegal shacks and market stalls have been demolished.
Rights groups, international organisations and foreign diplomats have openly condemned the operation.
”It is with great concern Sweden has noted the merciless destruction of informal structures and dwelling in Zimbabwean cities, having left hundreds of thousands of poor families destitute and homeless in wintertime,” said Swedish ambassador Kristina Svensson.
”The winter is cold in Zimbabwe and it is freezingly cold for those who now lack shelter and income,” she said at a function to mark her country’s national day this week.
A grouping of churches in the eastern province of Manicaland said that though the churches appreciate the need to clean up cities, ”we are left shocked and numbed by the utter havoc and destruction being currently wreaked”.
”A man-made humanitarian crisis has been created,” the churches said in a statement.
An association of Zimbabwean NGOs, Nango, said that while no audit has been carried out yet on the impact of the operation on the livelihoods and welfare of people, the exercise ”points to the significant entrenchment of an already dire urban poverty, unemployment and human rights violations”.
”By no means should the prerogative of fostering a clean environment be allowed to override government’s obligations to protect the interests of the poor, the marginalised and the vulnerable,” said Nango.
Analysts struggled to find explanations.
”I think a number of actions being done now don’t have planning behind them; they don’t have much period of thinking and analysis,” said political commentator Heneri Dzinotyiweyi.
”I think Mugabe wants to clean up his mess before he leaves office,” said another commentator, who asked not be named.
Opposition lawmaker Trudy Stevenson said the agenda is to ”drive everyone out of towns and cities back into the rural areas, so they cannot organise themselves and challenge the regime”.
Another theory making the rounds in the capital is that the government wants people back in the villages and on the farms, which have experienced a shortage of agricultural labour since the land reforms began in 2000. — Sapa-AFP