Armed paramilitary police swept through a Harare township, pulling down more than 100 prefabricated wooden cabins — including one in which screaming children had taken refuge, witnesses and opposition activists said on Tuesday.
President Robert Mugabe has congratulated police for a so-called urban renewal campaign that has left up to 1,5-million people homeless and sparked outrage around the world.
The Zimbabwean government is mobilising soldiers to build houses for the thousands of people it forced from their homes in an urban clean up campaign that has drawn condemnation at home and abroad, a spokesperson said on Thursday.
Hundreds of police were deployed in the Zimbabwean capital on Wednesday and army units were reportedly on standby before a two-day strike called by critics of President Robert Mugabe to protest his clampdown on street traders and slum dwellers.
Police in Zimbabwe continued demolishing thousands of shacks and vendors’ kiosks in opposition strongholds on Monday, burning a 10km-long line of curio stalls near Victoria Falls. A spokesperson for the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change called the crackdown a ”tyranny” and urged people to resist.
Zimbabwean church representatives on Sunday denounced the week-long crackdown against street traders and shack dwellers, while police continued arrests and demolition work.
Major increases in the price of the staple diet of bread and maize meal went into effect on Saturday in Harare, but the Zimbabwean capital was reported quiet after a weeklong blitz on street traders and shack dwellers that saw ten of thousands arrested or left homeless in the midwinter cold.
The government threatened on Tuesday to demolish squatter shacks in what it calls an urban beautification campaign, following the arrests of about 10Â 000 street traders in the capital, a stronghold of the opposition. The campaign against vendors has already sparked clashes between traders and police and unrest has been reported elsewhere.
President Robert Mugabe has told United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan that Zimbabwe will welcome food aid as long as it is not tied to any political conditions. Between two million and five million Zimbabweans face starvation unless 1,2-million tonnes of grain are imported quickly.
President Robert Mugabe has appointed Didymus Mutasa, the head of the country’s secret police, to oversee Zimbabwe’s controversial land-redistribution programme, the government said on Friday. The land-redistribution programme has been dogged by allegations of favouritism and corruption.