Human rights lawyers in Zimbabwe on Thursday slammed the authorities’ closure of a popular Harare fruit and vegetable market on public health grounds, saying informal vendors were being victimised.
Earlier this week, Harare’s state-appointed commission which has replaced the opposition-led council, announced the closure of Mbare Musika market amid reports of increasing cases of cholera in Zimbabwe. Fourteen people have already died from the disease, three of them in Harare.
Mbare Musika is Harare’s biggest outdoor market. Like many other parts of the capital, it is strewn with piles of uncollected rubbish. The authorities said they were worried conditions at the market would contribute to the spread of cholera, a highly-infectious disease.
The Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) said in a statement that while the association appreciated public health concerns, the city’s health crisis had been caused by ”the commission’s unlawful actions”.
”The Harare commission has regrettably chosen to ignore their duty to repair malfunctioning waste disposal systems and omitted to remove refuse for many months, as is their duty under local legislation, by-laws and regulations, as well as under international human rights instruments,” the statement read.
The lawyers said the action had violated the vendors’ rights to earn a livelihood.
”It is the commission’s own unlawful actions… which have led to the public health crisis, and for which these same persons [vendors] have now been subjected to additional victimisation by having their source of livelihood guillotined without due process,” the statement added.
Meanwhile, despite the commission’s promise to clean up the market this week, garbage is still lying uncollected there, the government Herald newspaper reported on Thursday.
Reports said dozens of farmers were left stranded with their produce at Mbare Musika earlier this week after authorities closed it down. Some vendors are now trying to set up an alternative informal market in the high density suburb of Hatcliffe, despite a ban on vending from undesignated areas, according to the paper.
Last year, the authorities chased away thousands of street sellers as part of its controversial urban clean-up campaign called Operation Murambatsvina. – Sapa-DPA