Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s government threatened a fresh round of slum clearances, state media said on Tuesday, after new shanty towns sprang up despite a widely condemned 2005 demolition campaign.
The government’s 2005 campaign, dubbed Operation Murambatsvina (Restore Order), was sharply criticised by human rights groups and the United Nations, which said over 700 000 people were left without homes, sources of livelihood or both.
Although the government has come up with a programme to provide shelter for victims of the crackdown, it has failed to meet growing requirements for housing, resulting in the re-emergence of shacks in Harare and other urban centres.
On Tuesday, the official Herald newspaper reported that Harare metropolitan province governor David Karimanzira had warned the government could embark on another “clean-up” operation to remove the new shacks.
“We might go back to Operation Murambatsvina if people continue to squat everywhere,” he told the newspaper.
“We want well-planned settlements and the government is not going to sit and watch while people build shacks everywhere; they will be demolished,” he added.
A deepening economic crisis and the collapse of commercial agriculture has seen more Zimbabweans flocking to cities in search of work opportunities, but limited housing and strained municipal services have failed to cope with the influx.
While government defended the last slum-clearance drive saying it was meant to root out crime and stamp out rampant black market activities, the UN branded it a “disastrous exercise … carried out in an unjust manner, with indifference to human suffering”.
Zimbabwe is currently in the grip of its worst economic crisis since independence in 1980, blamed by many on Mugabe’s policies.
Inflation is above 1 200%, unemployment has risen above 80% while fuel, food and foreign currency are in short supply.
“They never existed’
In May 2006, human rights group Amnesty International (AI) released satellite images of the effect of Operation Murambatsvina.
The satellite photographs, commissioned by AI, depict the destruction of Porta Farm, a large informal settlement established over 15 years ago. Prior to being demolished, it boasted schools, a children’s centre and a mosque, AI said.
“These satellite images are irrefutable evidence — if further evidence is even needed — that the Zimbabwean government has obliterated entire communities — completely erased them from the map, as if they never existed,” said Kolawole Olaniyan, director of AI’s Africa programme.
He added: “The images and footage are a graphic indictment of the Zimbabwean government’s policies. They show the horrifying transition of an area from a vibrant community to rubble and shrubs — in the space of just 10 months.”
These evictions took place while UN special envoy Anna Tibaijuka was in Zimbabwe to compile the report that contains the tally of 700 000 people left homeless in about six weeks, during the winter months.
Members of the envoy’s team visited Porta Farm and witnessed the demolitions and forced removal of people. Tibaijuka’s report describes how the team was “shocked by the brutality” of what it witnessed. The report also says the campaign violated human rights and possibly breached international law.
Local human rights monitors reported that during the chaos several deaths occurred, including those of two children, AI said.
The communities affected by Operation Murambatsvina were among the poorest and most vulnerable in Zimbabwe. In several cases, such as Porta Farm, they had been the victims of previous forced evictions carried out by the authorities, AI said.