Ronald Matsito has been unable to pick up the pieces since his home of 15 years and his small hardware shop were bulldozed two months ago during the Zimbabwe government’s clean up campaign.
”I can’t see a way forward,” says Matsito (55) a father of five who lives in Mufakose, a working-class district in southwest Harare. ”I’ve lost everything.”
”I have no relatives, no one to ask for help. The people are all in the same predicament.”
Hundreds of thousands of victims of a ten-week demolition blitz are living on the edge in Zimbabwe after their homes, market stalls and shops were destroyed.
Promised housing has for the most part yet to materialise, forcing many of the new homeless to live in tents while others are recovering scraps from the rubble of their former homes to rebuild a smaller shack.
Tens of thousands of people are sleeping out in the open, exposed to the bitter cold of the southern hemisphere winter, according to aid agencies.
An unknown number have moved to the countryside where food shortages are acute. Others have been taken in by family and friends in already crammed homes.
After his two-room home was destroyed, Matsito erected walls by piling his belongings, wrapped plastic sheeting around them and found a slab of corrugated steel to use as a roof.
His makeshift house lies next to where his backyard dwelling and home of 15 years once stood.
Matsito, who gave a false name out of fear of reprisals, turned to United Nations aid agencies for blankets ”because the children were shivering at night”, and now depends on hand-outs to survive.
His face drawn and looking thin, Matsito says he sometimes walks three kilometers to buy bread due to shortages. He worries about the price of maize, the staple food, which has increased three-fold since he lost his home.
”I have enough maize now for eight days. Where will I find the next bag?” he asks. Most of the homeless survive on sadza, a thick maize porridge.
With unemployment at 70%, finding a job seems an impossible prospect for those like Matsito who have been robbed of their livelihoods.
Street and market vending remain outlawed after most of the city’s stalls and so-called home industries, small artisan shops, were razed.
At Hatcliffe Extension, a township of about 20 000 people in northwest Harare, Farai Sibanda’s family spent six weeks in a transit camp before being told by Zimbabwean authorities that they could go back to the dirt field where their home once stood.
The family of eight spent close to a month sleeping outside before construction workers showed up with material to build new homes in the coming weeks as part of the government’s new Operation Garikai, or Live Well.
But the Sibanda family got fed up of waiting, so last week they took some of the material to build a small shack — although they expect that it too will be taken down.
”I don’t think the government has the money or the wish to build housing for these people,” says opposition lawmaker Trudy Stevenson.
”They are thinking that they will be grateful that they are back at Hatcliffe and will shut up.”
”They will be forgotten,” says Stevenson who is trying to mobilise aid for the demolition victims.
While the homeless say they blame President Robert Mugabe for their hardships, there is no talk of protest action, mostly out of fear.
”We are afraid of pursuing anything. We are just waiting,” says Sibanda, who feels he is powerless.
”The worst thing is that we were made to feel that we cannot make decisions. The people who gave us the stand can come and take it away. The people who evicted us from Hatcliffe are the same ones who took us back.” – Sapa-AFP