The United Nations on Wednesday balked at claims by a Zimbabwean Cabinet minister that the world body had designed a substandard home to house victims of a clean-up blitz that left hundreds of thousands homeless.
”I would like to take the opportunity to categorically refute suggestions that the UN has applied double standards to Africans and more specifically to Zimbabweans,” said UN representative to Zimbabwe Agostinho Zacarias.
The envoy was reacting to a report in the state-run Herald on Wednesday, which quoted Local Government Minister Ignatius Chombo as saying that a model of a home built for evictees was ”substandard”.
The paper said Chombo described the house as ”below human dignity, saying the people who designed the structure were guided by a ‘this-is-good-for-Africa attitude’.”
”This structure is not permanent. We want permanent houses for our people,” the minister told the paper while visiting the Hopley transit camp on the southern fringes of the capital, where many people are still living in makeshift plastic shelters following Operation Murambatsvina.
Zacarias said the example was ”not a UN model for the obvious reason that it was designed jointly by UN technicians together with technicians appointed by the ministry of local government”.
He said the design was the result of extended negotiations between the UN and the government of Zimbabwe.
”It should more correctly be called a government of Zimbabwe-UN house,” he said.
The envoy said the sample was ”infinitely superior to living under plastic sheeting, which continues to be the situation in which many families continue to find themselves in, months after Operation Murambatsvina”.
Zacarias said the UN is ready to build homes for 2 500 families within three months under an initiative to provide shelter for victims of the government’s demolition blitz.
Chombo’s remarks came two weeks after UN relief aid coordinator Jan Egeland met President Robert Mugabe, where the long-time Zimbabwean leader snubbed a UN offer of tents for victims of Murambatsvina.
The demolition campaign, which the government said was aimed at ridding the country of crime and grime, left about 700 000 people homeless earlier this year, according to UN figures.
Mugabe has said through his spokesperson that ”tents just don’t augur well with our culture”, adding that ”if the UN does not have enough money for permanent shelter, let the little they have be used to augment what the government already has”.
Egeland toured areas razed during the government ”urban renewal” campaign in May and expressed dismay at the poor living conditions in the demolished areas, offering UN help.
Zimbabwe is in the throes of severe political and economic crisis, with about 80% of the population living under the poverty threshold. More than 70% are jobless and inflation is running at more than 400%. — Sapa-AFP