Zimbabwean authorities are blocking aid to about 2 300 people resettled on a farm outside Harare following a government demolitions campaign, rights and church groups said on Wednesday.
Living conditions at Hopley Farm, where the displaced have been living for the past three weeks, have been described as inhumane with no shelter, erratic water supplies and little food.
”The people are living in the open with little food, no shelter. Access to these people has not been easy,” said Alouis Chaumba, director for the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP).
”We have secured porridge and four bales of clothing and we are now waiting for permission to gain access to the people,” said Chaumba.
The farm on the southern outskirts of Harare was designated by the government as a new housing site following a 10-week campaign to demolish shacks, homes, market stalls and other businesses.
But Chaumba described the new settlement as nothing less than a transit camp, similar to one that was closed down in late July.
”What the government has done is open a new transit camp after closing down Caledonia,” Chaumba said, adding that no houses had been given to the displaced.
”There is no running water. There are erratic water supplies by the municipality. If nothing is done about conditions at Hopley we will have an outbreak of cholera or dysentery,” he said.
Zimbabwe launched Operation Murambatsvina in mid-May. A United Nations report released last month said the demolitions drive left 700 000 Zimbabweans homeless and destitute and that a further 2,4-million had been affected by the blitz.
Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights said they had asked authorities to grant permission to the church groups to provide aid and for its legal teams to provide assistance to the displaced.
The lawyers were still waiting for a reply on Wednesday, said Otto Saki from ZLHR.
”We have been trying to help churches get food to our clients at the farm but we have been denied access,” said Saki.
He said an army officer in charge at Hopley said they could not enter the farm without permission from the government of President Robert Mugabe.
”The authorities present at Hopley Farm must be condemned in the strongest terms for making it impossible for any form of humanitarian or legal assistance to be provided to the people,” ZLHR said in a statement.
The lawyers also said around 210 children were deprived of schooling and that some babies, orphans, elderly and terminally-ill patients had ”gone for days without any medication and humanitarian assistance”.
South African Anglican Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane separately said that Zimbabwean authorities were blocking truckloads of food and blankets from being delivered from its southern neighbour.
Trucks carrying blankets, maize, beans, and oil were meant to leave for Zimbabwe last week but Zimbabwean authorities wanted certificates that the food was not genetically modified, Ndungane told a news conference in Cape Town, South Africa.
The UN report called on the government to help provide relief to the hundreds of thousands who were displaced, calling it a ”humanitarian crisis of immense proportions”.
Zimbabwe slammed the report, saying it had been produced under pressure from former colonial power Britain. ‒ Sapa-AFP