In the south east of Zimbabwe lies the massive Gonarezhou National Park, a previously unspoiled wilderness. The Park is flanked on its eastern boundary by the border with Mozambique and just to the south lies the mighty Kruger National Park. Before the Mugabe regime initiated the chaotic land grab in Zimbabwe to bolster its rapidly declining popularity, conservationists and wild life experts had been planning, and the governments concerned had committed themselves to, a Transfrontier Park which would straddle the borders between Mozambique, Zimbabwe and South Africa.

Riot police turned an urban township into a ghost town Wednesday, rounding up the last residents in defiance of a UN call to halt a demolition campaign that has left 700,000 without homes or jobs. After emptying the Porta Farm township - where some 30,000 people lived just days ago - earth-movers were seen lumbering into the area to finish clearing debris from destroyed homes, cabins and shacks as part of what the government calls Operation Drive Out Trash.

On Tuesday night, 19 July 2005, three uniformed Zimbabwe Republic Police details forced their way into ZimRights premises in Harare. The three details knocked on the main gate and demanded that they be allowed inside. The guard did not open the gate but questioned their mission and who they were looking for. The details replied that it was rudeness to question the motive of the police and that failure to cooperate with the police is punishable. With these intimidating remarks, the guard was forced to open the gate.

This Report describes the proceedings of an event aimed at facilitating open, inclusive debate amongst the Zimbabwean diaspora in the UK and others concerned about the continuing crisis in Zimbabwe, its regional and international implications, the role of civil society in the struggle for democratic governance, human rights, justice and peace, and the possible strategies for change. The Open Forum 2005 on Zimbabwe, South Africa and the Region was organised in London on 4 June 2005 by the Britain Zimbabwe Society in association with a number of associated organisations. It was conceived as an inclusive, non-partisan, nongovernmental forum.

Zimbabwe attained independence in 1980. But what does 25 years of independence mean to the ordinary Zimbabwean? Does it mean standing in a long queue waiting for a bag of sugar or questioning what has led a black man to oppress his fellow comrades? These are just a few of the thought provoking questions scrawled on the walls of a grimy public toilet in a public art installation at the just ended Khululeka Exhibition in Bulawayo. Artists and painters at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe in Bulawayo were encouraged to present various interpretations of their understanding of Freedom in Zimbabwe. By visiting the Kubatana web site you can also listen to audio files associated with this story.
* View a video of "Operation Murambatsvina" online. Visit:
http://t2news.amnesty.r3h.net/mavp/mediaclip.nsf/0/1AD959CE6EAFEE738025… (You will need to copy and paste the URL into your browser for it to work)
* Read a recent UN report condemning forced removals in Zimbabwe. Visit:
http://www.un.org/News/dh/infocus/zimbabwe/zimbabwe_rpt.pdf

The Media and Information Commission (MIC) is refusing to give Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe an operating licence for fear of its robust reporting on government's policy failures, Sam Sipepa Nkomo, ANZ CEO, said on Wednesday. "I think they are scared of the Daily News," Sipepa told journalists at a press briefing in the capital. "You can imagine the extensive coverage an independent daily paper can give its readers in the wake of Operation Murambatsvina and how government could be kept on its toes trying to do damage control. That I think is what the authorities are scared of."

At a turbulent historical moment, Versions of Zimbabwe: New Approaches to Literature and Culture considers the relationships between Zimbabwe's creative literature, history and politics. It assumes that literature and culture cannot be understood separately from larger social trends; and that besides being legitimate subjects of study in themselves, through foregrounding literary and cultural issues, insights into the present crisis inflicting the country can be achieved. The book is the result of a collaboration of scholars from southern Africa and overseas, whose work emphasises hitherto overshadowed subjects of literature, exposing new and untried approaches to Zimbabwean writing.

I was reading the topic of tsunami in Zimbabwe with a great sympathy to my friends in Zimbabwe. It appears to me that the land reform we have been hearing of is in havoc'. The people who were supposed to be allocated land are all in an urban area doing illegal dealings etc etc...At this point of time I think Africans should stand up and say dictatura proliata no more - what we need may be dictatura economica'.

I commend the editor of Pambazuka and in particular Mary Ndlovu for a brilliant article "Zimbabwe's Tsunami" and consider myself fortunate to have had the opportunity of reading it. Well done.

Her simple but powerful articulation of issues pertaining to the unfortunate Operation Murambatsvina will offer those not familiar with the historical perspective of Zimbabwean politics and economics a thorough lesson on Zimbabwe 101. It is such articles that must be preserved for future reference as we struggle with where to next?

I am an admirer of Mary Ndlovu and her approach to sensitive issues. She looks at all angles and avoids the mistake of being biased or persuaded by one school of thought. She lets history unfold and be told in a way that provokes action and enables Zimbabweans from all persuasions to unite and fight the common enemy in our midst.

The sequence of events, motives and repeated repression of a people by those entrusted with their welfare is hard to understand but Mary offers the kind of narrative that works through a jigsaw puzzle. We need to only find the critical missing pieces to make the picture complete and she provided hints on where we may look.

She also remembers to carefully analyze contemporary Zimbabwe where life is a constant nightmare. With citizens like Mary, we can only hope for a better tomorrow for our children. Her article must encourage other Zimbabweans to contribute and share their thoughts with the rest of the world.

Zimbabweans have been accused of not writing enough but what I have seen in the past year tends to refute that impression. We love Zimbabwe and what has happened since 1997 has only had one result, destruction; the very reason why we need to record our history and write we must.

The negative and painful history we so well remember should not be an excuse for us to give up but to find creative ways of fighting back and one day soon stand tall as a nation again ready to take our place on the global scene. I have hope that day will come because I know of many ordinary Zimbabweans all over the world and within Zimbabwe who realize how much their democratic space has shrunk but find new, innovative ways of making an impact. It is these small initiatives that when added together will be like another tsunami, only this time it will be a different tsunami with positive outcomes. Thank you.

Operation Murambatsvina - sweep out the trash – has torn through Zimbabwe like a Tsunami, describes Mary Ndlovu. Hundreds of thousands of people have been internally displaced, but the true cost of the government operation on the livelihoods of people is almost impossible to predict. As the G8 meets in Scotland and African leaders conclude an African Union Summit in Libya, Zimbabweans feel that the rest of Africa has turned its back on them.

Towards the end of May a tsunami struck Harare, flattering everything in its path - informal businesses, solidly built homes, shacks, orphanages, churches, even a mosque; it took with it people’s lives, livelihoods, family life, their spirit to survive. Like the Asian tsunami in December, the number of its victims and the total cost of the destruction are hard to quantify; unlike the Asian tsunami, it is man-made and continues in wave after wave of senseless brutality, reaching every corner of this increasingly miserable country.

The government calls it Murambatsvina – sweep out the trash – or Operation Restore Order. But Zimbabweans have rejected the government’s term, for they are not trash, and order has not been restored. Only the term “tsunami” adequately portrays the suddenness, the scale and the nature of the catastrophic destruction which has been visited on us - not by erratic nature, but by our own government.

Suddenly, with virtually no warning, police in central Harare descended on informal traders, breaking and burning their stalls, confiscating or destroying their wares, and arresting thousands. By the following week, the attacks had spread throughout Harare and to other urban centres in the country, and the assault on informal housing had begun. Six weeks later, the operation continues. Police of various descriptions move from township to township, ordering residents to destroy their illegal dwellings or have them smashed. Sometimes sufficient warning has been given for people to remove their furniture and salvage some of their building materials, other times the bulldozers are hot on the heels of the police, disrupting funerals, chasing people from their cooking and their bathing. At least six people have been killed directly by the police actions. Many others, especially babies, the aged and those suffering from AIDS have succumbed to exposure, shock and hunger as they huddle through the cold nights in the rubble of their homes.

Now, in the depth of the winter season, tens of thousands remain camped in the open, dazed and unbelieving. Others, perhaps hundreds of thousands, have moved into the houses of friends or neighbours or relatives, who were already overcrowded, or sleep on verandahs. Thousands are crammed into churches where they have been offered shelter and are being fed; some have managed to sell their furniture to raise the bus fare to go to their rural homes, where they face an uncertain future with no food or housing.

How do we expect them to react when our President tells UN experts that the action is for the good of the people, and they appreciate what has been done for them? Can it ever be for someone’s good to destroy their home when you have nothing to replace it with? When you tell them they are rubbish, maggots, who are not wanted? When you cause them the utmost trauma of preventing them from feeding their families? When you destroy the huts of orphans and smash the centres that were caring for them; when you bulldoze a clinic that was providing anti-retrovirals to AIDS patients and tell them to go to rural areas where there are no medicines.

Surely a government which turns so viciously on its own people must be acting in response to a serious threat to its power, an armed rebellion or organised sabotage at least. No. Not at all. That has not happened and government has not mentioned it. The government says it is seeking to reduce crime and restore order to the cities of Zimbabwe. There has been too much illegal activity and this must be stopped; informal trading venues and illegal dwellings were havens for criminals, foreign exchange dealers, fraudsters; purveyors of stolen property, making once beautiful cities filthy and unsafe. This is a clean-up operation which will catch the criminals, drive the forex back into the banks, and black market goods into legitimate channels.

It is unspeakably depressing to watch government and party leaders trying to defend the indefensible. Raze whole suburbs to catch a few criminals? Deprive people of earning a living to stop thieves? How many more thieves will be created? With a national housing backlog of two million units, bulldoze more than 80,000? Where is the once very professional police force whose training teaches them how to identify and apprehend criminals? Where are the health officials who enforce hygiene standards and the town planners who design orderly housing developments? Why the sudden need to restore beauty to the cities?

Of course it is true that the cities of Zimbabwe have deteriorated during the past ten years. Visitors from other parts of Africa once gawked at Harare, wondering how such a beautiful, orderly municipality could really be African. It was well-planned, most people were in employment, there was little sign of the shanty towns and street traders common in other African metropolises.

But things have changed, for several reasons. First is the deterioration in standards of government, especially the growth of corruption, which sees by-laws flagrantly ignored for the price of a small bribe, and awarding of contracts to cronies incapable of delivering the services. Second was the effect of the economic decline resulting from the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP), introduced in the early 1990’s. Many urban workers lost their jobs, and government encouraged them to turn to the informal sector to create their own incomes, in manufacturing, services and retail trading; councils which resisted were ordered by central government to relax by-laws to accommodate them. Third was the effect of the farm invasions of 2000 and thereafter. On the one hand these produced a flood of displaced farm workers, many of whom crowded into the slums of Harare, and on the other it opened former farmland to be allocated without any planning to loyal supporters of ZANU PF for informal settlement. Fourthly, when the opposition MDC won control of most urban councils between 2000 and 2002, government deliberately undermined their operations, using its powers under the Urban Councils Act to prevent rate increases in line with hyperinflation. Borrowing powers to develop housing and upgrade crumbling infrastructure, especially in water and sewage reticulation, were systematically denied. The decline of Zimbabwe’s cities is in large part, therefore, the direct result of government’s economic and political mismanagement.

Then suddenly, without consultation, public deliberation, or even the simplest level of information, government declared itself obsessed with illegality, and determined to eliminate it from Zimbabwe. This seemed strange in view of the fact that it is the government that has been content to ignore legality whenever it threatened to restrict its own operations, flouting court orders in regard to holding of elections, seizures of land, release of detainees from prison, and prosecution of known criminals. But Zimbabweans have come to know that government uses the law when it finds it convenient and abuses it to pursue its political goals.

In this case, the line between legality and illegality has become blurred. Many of the informal traders had licences issued by the local authorities, but many did not. Many of those who did broke the law in other ways, by receiving stolen goods or dealing in foreign currency or black market goods, but most did not. The settlements around Harare which have now been destroyed had the blessing of the highest government authorities, who had allocated stands, arranged in some cases for financing, and publicly encouraged the recipients to build homes. Does this make them legal if the necessary planning laws have been ignored? The people are now being punished for taking government instructions as legality.

The cry by government that traders and home-owners were illegal is thus partly correct, and partly not. However, the methods used in carrying out their operation of destruction are clearly not legal. The actions of the police have all been taken without due process, and violate statute law, our constitution, and international law.

The Urban Councils Act specifies that an illegal structure can only be destroyed when notice of 28 days has been given to the owner and occupier and opportunity has been given for a court application; no one was given such notice. The common law does not permit the deprivation of property in the possession of anyone without legal sanction; those who had their buildings and their trading goods destroyed or seized had their property illegally despoiled. The constitution guarantees the right to be protected from arbitrary deprivation of property, and from cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Surely destroying one’s home and leaving them in the open is cruel and degrading by anyone’s estimate. The United Nations Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights provides that everyone has the right to shelter, while the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights has been interpreted, in a case brought against Nigeria, to mean that a government may not evict anyone from his home without providing alternative accommodation. How can our government claim that it is restoring legality, when all the means it is using are quite clearly infringements of the law at every level?

The effects and costs of the operation are certainly too huge to measure. Six weeks since its beginning, the tsunami continues to destroy people’s lives. The original estimates of 200,000 to 250,000 persons displaced have by now doubled. The 300,000 school children displaced from schools was given by the Ministry of Education for Harare only, after only two weeks of demolitions. In Mutare, Bulawayo, Victoria Falls, Beitbridge, Harare itself, and many other towns and cities, countless thousands more have since been affected. A million traders and their families losing their livelihoods will have an immeasurable effect. Of course many will begin again because they simply have to feed their families, legal or not legal. But in total, how much business is being lost for every sector of the economy? And how many of these were sending money and food home to the rural areas. We simply can’t know.

Perhaps falling back in horror at what they have done in the past weeks, the government has suddenly announced a programme of reconstruction. Thousands of stands will be serviced and houses built over the next three years. Although only four houses have been built in a week, 9,000 are to be ready in two months. This raises more questions than it answers: where will the money come from in a cash-strapped economy? Who will pay for the houses? And most important of all - if government can mobilise the money to build houses, why didn’t they do it before smashing down the ones that already existed? The cost of re-housing Indonesian communities affected by the natural tsunami last December is estimated at $US5 billion for 500,000 still homeless. We have at least that number of homeless people now. Where in our wildest dreams do we imagine we will get funding to rebuild what we have ourselves destroyed? Our economy was already in a state of complete collapse - what some have referred to as meltdown. Rebuilding on this scale is pure delusion.

But as government’s efforts at damage control pick up pace, more themes have emerged. Applicants for new trading licences and allocation of stands will be “vetted” - a term that has not been defined. It is only assumed that they will be checked for criminal records (few will be found) and asked to produce ZANU PF membership cards. Already we are told that the stands at Whitecliff Farm are being reserved for civil servants - police, army and CIO primarily; they are certainly not the people who were displaced. Women arrested for protesting were finger-printed and told they would never get vending licenses again. “Presumptive taxes” will be levied on informal traders, who will pay income tax on “presumed income”. While party lackeys wheel and deal and survive on kick-backs and bribes, the struggling poor will provide for the instruments of their own oppression.

Perhaps more sinister, all these processes of “reconstruction” have been removed from the local authorities who legally have responsibility for them. Licences have always been issued by the councils, not by the police. Housing stands have been allocated by the council housing departments. Now we have unknown authorities responsible for allocating these resources. We have new “task forces” controlled by the army assigned to supervise the reconstruction. Clearly, there is an all-out attempt to usurp the designated powers of elected councils completely and emasculate any democratic participation of the people. We are truly heading for a military state, where central government takes everything, leaving no democratic space for anyone else. We are even to have chiefs for cities, since they will better implement government policies! Government is no longer by elected officials, answerable to the people. It is by appointees of those clinging to power by the barrel of the gun.

As we struggle to give a rational explanation for these seemingly deranged acts of destruction several points emerge clearly:

1. This is very obviously a pre-emptive assault on urban populations, the stronghold of the opposition, and the potential source of any meaningful threat to ZANU PF’s power; its main aim seems to be to forcibly relocate poor people to rural areas by making it impossible for them to live in towns;

2. It is not only an attack on towns, but on informal activities in rural areas as well – wood carvers and sculptors, gold diggers, even fishermen; nor is it an attack only on opposition supporters, as many of ZANU PF’s members have also been affected;

3. It seeks to impose government and ZANU PF control on sections of the economy where their grip has slipped in recent years - in the control of foreign exchange rates, the collection of taxes and the determination of who benefits from resource allocation. As such it is a desperate attempt to ensure that the little wealth that remains is channelled through the hands of government, to be spent as they see fit;

4. It is not going to improve the national economy - in fact it will cripple it further, and it will have horrendous consequences on the lives of millions of Zimbabweans, reducing hundreds of thousands more to penury;

5. It has been undertaken in a typically ZANU PF way - suddenly, violently, illegally and recklessly, without regard to the disastrous consequences;

6. One more very large nail has been hammered into the coffin of Zimbabwean democracy, which is rapidly being replaced by an illegitimate oligarchy amassing wealth for themselves while the people starve, and maintaining their position by military rule.

And Africa turns its back. They do no want to know. We helped South Africans when they were fighting a force too powerful, why do they deny us the same? We do not want to be rescued by the developed world. We want to be rescued by our fellow Africans, understanding our plight and standing by the principles to which they committed themselves in the African Union, the Harare Declaration, numerous international human rights instruments, the SADC and NEPAD. Why do they not care? Why do our pleas fall on deaf ears?

* Mary Ndlovu is a Zimbabwean human rights activist

* Please send comments to [email protected]

* Read the “The Zimbabwean Crisis and the Challenges for the Left” a Public Lecture delivered at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal by Brian Raftopoulos.
http://www.nu.ac.za/ccs/default.asp?2,40,5,735

"We, associations of inhabitants, international networks, voluntary groups, NGOs, public agencies, citizens of the world, are profoundly hurt by and denounce the ‘Murambatsvina operation’ (sweep away the garbage operation) launched by the government of Zimbabwe."

“Operation Murambatsvina” and “Operation Restore Order” are the code names used by the police for a massive operation that began in Zimbabwe towards the end of May. This nationwide campaign, which has been conducted in the cities and towns, in peri-urban areas, and on farms settled after land invasions, has led to the destruction of many thousands of houses and means of shelter, trading stalls and markets. Whatever the reasons behind this, none of which can be morally justified, this campaign has created a huge humanitarian disaster causing enormous hardship and suffering. Within the space of a few weeks, Operation Murambatsvina has produced a massive internal refugee population who are homeless and without the means to earn a living.

Doctors at two of Zimbabwe's largest referral hospitals have embarked on an indefinite strike, demanding a pay rise of more than 100 percent and a special allocation to cover escalating fuel costs caused by the ongoing petrol shortage. Junior and mid-level doctors at Harare's Parirenyatwa and Central hospitals vowed on Wednesday not to resume work until the government had met their demands.

Zimbabwean journalists now risk spending 20 years in jail following the signing into law by President Robert Mugabe of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Bill which introduces stiffer penalties against the publication of falsehoods. The Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Bill Chapter 9:23 which was passed by Parliament at the end of last year, was gazetted on 2 June 2005 after the President assented to it.

"Noting with grave concern the deepening humanitarian and human rights crisis in Zimbabwe, more than 200 African and international human rights and civic groups have come together to call on the African Union and the United Nations to take action. Over the past four weeks the Government of Zimbabwe has orchestrated the widespread forced eviction of tens of thousands of informal traders and families living in informal settlements. During these forced evictions homes have been burnt and property destroyed. Many individuals have been arbitrarily arrested, detained, fined, abducted and/or beaten. Such actions continue unabated, and with impunity."

On 25 May, Africa Day, the Government of Zimbabwe began an operation labelled "Operation Murambatsvina". While Government has translated this to mean "Operation Clean-up", the more literal translation of "murambatsvina" is "getting rid of the filth". The operation has continued throughout the month of June, and has affected virtually every town and rural business centre in the country. From Mount Darwin in the north, to Beitbridge in the south, Mutare in the East and Bulawayo in the west, no part of the nation has been spared the impact of what could be termed a slow-moving earthquake; every day the nation awakes to find more buildings have fallen around them, more families have been displaced. Families are often having their homes and possessions ruthlessly burnt to the ground, or are given a few hours to remove what they can save before bulldozers come in to demolish entire structures.

Twenty nine Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) members were arrested in Bulawayo on Saturday during a peaceful procession against Operation Murambatsvina in the run up to World Refugee Day 20 June. Twenty eight were arrested on site with one handing herself in, in solidarity. The women spent 48 hours in custody and appeared in court on Monday charged with Miscellaneous Offices Chapter 3, "Blocking Traffic". They were granted free bail and will go on trial on 11 July 2005 in Provincial Magistrates Court Bulawayo.

Zimbabwe police have extended a demolition campaign targeting the homes and livelihoods of the urban poor to the vegetable gardens they rely on for food, saying the crops planted on vacant lots are damaging the environment. The crackdown on urban farming - at a time of food shortages in Zimbabwe - is the latest escalation in the government's month-long Operation Murambatsvina (or Drive Out Trash). The UN estimates the campaign has left at least 1,5-million people homeless in the winter cold. Police say more than 30 000 have also been arrested.
* Visit www.kubatana.net for more information and photographs.

The Batsirai Group is a Zimbabwean non-governmental organisation working to strengthen community response to HIV & AIDS. Following a successful two-year placement, the organisation is currently seeking to consolidate its work in promoting community participation within its partner communities and within its own staff. The postholder will also assist in strengthening systems documentation, organisational learning and participatory monitoring and evaluation.

It is exactly now 29 years after the massacre of thousands of children who marched against the compulsory teaching of Africans and many injustices perpetrated against children in schools in Soweto, South Africa during the Apartheid Era. 16 June 1976 marked a new era for the African child, an era of deep thoughts, feelings, emotions and vision. An era that made the world over sympathise with the African child more – a child born and bred in a continent not only plagued by poverty but by disease and both natural and man made disasters. What comes into my mind about the African Child today is a deep sense of deprivation – a child born in a rich continent with abundant human and material resources, a child whose legs are in a deep pool of water but whose presence does not mean much as the same child dies from thirst.