Zimbabwe has resumed destroying homes and flattened the remains of the country’s biggest slum, witnesses said on Tuesday, a day after United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan said he plans to visit the country to discuss the controversial demolition campaign.
Zimbabwean anti-riot police beat up people and torched property as they razed temporary shelters in the Porta Farm slum west of Harare, which had been the home of about 20 000 residents, witnesses said.
”Police started chasing away and beating up people [on Monday] night, saying we were refusing to leave,” said a former squatter at the Porta Farm slum, requesting anonymity.
He said police also burnt ”wardrobes and other furniture” of residents who had returned and began to rebuild after Porta Farm had been cleared earlier.
The destruction of Porta Farm marks a resumption of the government’s controversial demolition campaign, which authorities said last week they had halted to give people time to obtain necessary permits for their homes and other buildings.
The demolitions came hours after Annan said on Monday that he had accepted an invitation to visit Zimbabwe to discuss a damning UN report on Harare’s demolition of urban slums that has left hundreds of thousands of people homeless.
Call to ‘organise action’
Meanwhile, Zimbabwe’s opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai on Tuesday urged his countrymen to ”organise action” and support the UN in its denunciation of the controversial urban clean-up campaign.
”The [UN] report presents a challenge to Zimbabweans to organise action and a public expression of support to the UN,” the leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) told a news conference in Harare.
”Unless Zimbabweans, with the help of the international community, deal with the current crisis decisively, we shall remain sucked in the irrationality of a rogue regime,” he said.
Zimbabwean authorities launched in mid-May their double-pronged Operation Drive Out Trash/Restore Order, razing townships and kiosks that they said were built illegally.
”The government said we were no longer allowed to stay here and promised to take us in groups to our rural homes, but they failed to provide the transport and now accuse us of refusing to go,” said George Kashape, another affected resident in Porta Farm.
Some people were so frustrated they burned their own property after failing to get transportation, Porta Farm residents said.
”The same government brought us here saying they were going to build us houses,” Kashape said, adding: ”They are not saying anything about allocating us alternative places under the reconstruction programme.”
Some of the Porta Farm residents had returned to the slum after the government closed down last week a temporary camp where people were housed under plastic sheeting in what humanitarian groups called ”appalling and shocking” conditions.
UN condemns campaign
The UN estimates that at least 700 000 people have lost their homes while 2,4-million others have been affected by the campaign.
In a report issued last week, the UN called for an immediate end to the demolitions and the prosecution of those responsible.
Although no date has been set for Annan’s trip, the UN chief said during a phone conversation last week with Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe that he ”stressed the need for action to be taken to help the people affected, to stop the clearances and to ensure those affected are not only looked after but they are given adequate housing”.
The Zimbabwean government has condemned the UN report as biased and exaggerated.
Mugabe — who has been assiduously courting Asian countries after being shunned by the West, which has imposed sanctions on the former Commonwealth nation for allegedly holding rigged elections and trampling on human rights — received the support of Chinese leaders during a visit to Beijing on Tuesday.
SA opposition launches anti-loan campaign
Meanwhile, South African opposition Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon has launched the Stop the Mugabe Loan Campaign, which includes an e-mail war to persuade South African President Thabo Mbeki not to lend money to Zimbabwe.
Leon launched the campaign at Parliament on Tuesday, noting that his party has been ”inundated with letters, e-mails, phone calls and faxes” from people expressing their outrage at the fact that South Africa is considering giving Mugabe nearly R7-billion — after the International Monetary Fund called in a $900-million dollar loan.
The DA has drafted a letter to Mbeki that can be found on the party’s website. It has also pledged to publish SMSs from the public on its website and then compile them to send to Mbeki’s office.
Leon said his party’s position on the loan ”is clear. We believe that South Africa should not extend any loans or credit to the Zimbabwean government.
”Doing so would mean propping up Mugabe and his [ruling] Zanu-PF, rewarding their corruption and endorsing their systematic human rights abuses, including Operation Murambatsvina [Drive Out Trash], which the UN views as a ‘clear violation of international law’.”
Leon said if any aid is to be given, it should come from international relief organisations, or else be granted in the form of emergency humanitarian assistance, such as South Africa has given in the past.
”Our government’s entire humanitarian assistance budget for this year is R13-million,” he noted.
Mugabe is asking for 500 times that amount. And if any kind of loan is to be given, Leon said, it should be subject to strict political conditions — not just minimal changes in Zimbabwe’s monetary policy or currency markets, as Mbeki has suggested.
Leon noted that the requested amount could build houses for 750 000 South Africans.
”If the government approves this loan, it will effectively be taking money away from poor South Africans to fund the eviction of poor Zimbabweans.
”Time and time again, Mugabe has proven his contempt for the African Union, for human rights, and most of all, for his own people,” said Leon. — Sapa-AFP, I-Net Bridge