The Zimbabwean government’s clean-up operation, Murambatsvina, has left the informal sector in misery and disarray, the Solidarity Peace Trust said on Wednesday.
The informal sector, in which 90% of Zimbabweans eke out a living, has been criminalised by the very government that should protect their rights, trust chairperson, Bulawayo’s Roman Catholic Archbishop Pius Ncube, said.
He was speaking at a review of the consequences of Murambatsvina and what the government has done since then.
”In Bulawayo, 9 000 licensed vendors operate where only 120 individual sites have been built in the past year. This means thousands of breadwinners live their entire working lives on the run, and lose thousands of millions of their goods to theft by the police.”
Ncube also said nothing has been done to help Zimbabweans who no longer have homes.
During operation Murambatsvina police burned or demolished people’s shacks in what the government called a ”clean-up” campaign in the cities in May 2005. According to the United Nations, it left at least 700 000 homeless and destitute and affected 1,2-million people in various ways.
”International organisations are trying to help build houses, but they are concerned that [they] will end up housing government officials.”
He recommended that vending marts be urgently built to accommodate the informal-trading sector. The UN and diplomatic corps should also put pressure on the Zimbabwean government to return full control of the building of houses to local authorities.
Professor Brian Raftopolous, from the Cape Town-based Institute for Justice and Reconciliation, agreed that the operation had been destructive.
”The lack of alternatives for the operation is resulting in continuing deterioration.”
Raftopolous said this had led to loss of hope among the people of Zimbabwe.
”The South African government and [Southern African Development Community — SADC] are sitting back and doing nothing.”
The SADC has not even made any public attempt to pressurise the Zimbabwean government, he said.
”If nothing is done, then a year from now, the situation would have changed for the worse,” Ncube said. — Sapa