Simbarashe Muchemwa points at a heap of broken asbestos and charred metal sheets — remnants of his makeshift furniture shop in Harare’s Glen View township — and shakes his head.
”This was my means of livelihood. It’s a loss that will take me years to recover from,” says the 30-year-old father of three.
Muchemwa says he ran a burgeoning carpentry business in the township that was renowned for its streetside furniture makers, supplying his products to leading department stores.
”I earned enough to feed my family, pay bills and look after my extended family in my rural home,” he says.
Muchemwa’s shop was razed along with hundreds of similar small businesses in Glen View during the government’s demolitions campaign that left hundreds of thousands homeless and destitute.
He now scrapes a meagre living on small repair jobs that he says are few and far apart.
His neighbour Mark Moyo, who used to run a barber shop, has set up a small table in the middle of the debris where he continues his trade using a battery-powered hair clipper.
”I can’t just give up or I will starve,” says Moyo, a small radio under the table blaring a popular religious song. ”I used to employ two assistants before my shop was destroyed, but now I earn only enough to buy my daily meals.”
Zimbabwean authorities launched Operation Murambatsvina in mid-May, razing shacks, homes, market stalls and small shops as part of what it described as an urban renewal campaign.
But the opposition denounced the operation as a campaign of repression, while Western governments and the United Nations harshly condemned the blitz.
A UN report released last month said the demolitions had left 700 000 people homeless or without sources of income, or both, in cities and towns across the country while a further 2,4-million were affected in varying degrees.
Opposition lawmaker Paul Madzore says up to 5 000 people lost their means of livelihood in Glen View. Up to half of them may have gone to the countryside, he said.
Most former traders like Witmore Matemera have decided to ”wait and see”.
Matemera said he used to do brisk business making low-cost wooden coffins and now spends his time hanging around with friends over a shared jug of beer.
”With the problem of Aids, many people are dying and some families cannot afford to bury their dead in expensive coffins from the funeral parlours. They came to us for affordable coffins and we were able to feed our families,” says Matemera.
”Now, I don’t know where to start from. I will just wait and see how it ends.”
The government says it is building factory shells and market stalls to promote orderly business.
But Matemera said government officials told him all places are taken up at the sites, although construction is still under way.
The country’s economy has been on a downturn over the past six years with a three-digit inflation and unemployment hovering at 70%.
Many who could not find jobs in the dwindling formal industry had resorted to running small business in makeshift shops in the townships.
A study by ActionAid International and a local residents group in July estimated that 73% of Zimbabwe’s urban dwellers were engaged in informal trade before the blitz. — Sapa-AFP