Scorched Earth
The horror of Robert Mugabe's 'final solution'

'We must clean the country of the crawling mass of maggots,' says the police commissioner as hundreds of thousands are put out in the cold.

3^rd July 2005

"The house I spent all my fortune on is gone. My family is homeless. It all happened so quickly. One minute we heard rumours about our houses being demolished, the next we were hurriedly packing our family's belongings since the riot police were moving in fast. We watched helplessly in the winter cold as bulldozers razed our houses. The house I had spent four years building was destroyed in the blink of an eye. I had borrowed money and used most of my salary on this house but it is no more."

Monalisa* narrated her ordeal with despair in her tear-filled eyes.

She is one of the many women and men who have been devastated by the government-sanctioned twin operations "Operation Restore Order" and "Operation Murambatsvina".

The latter literally translated means "no to dirt" and is being executed by the local government authorities and the police. Monalisa lived in Tongogara, in a home she bought through one of the many housing co-operatives that emerged during the land reform programme. It is situated a few kilometres outside Harare along the Harare-Bulawayo highway. The entire settlement was destroyed despite the fact that people had lived there for more than four years and paid rates to the local council.

Observers estimate that more than 300,000 families have been affected while about 22,000 informal traders have been arrested for operating without licences among a host of other reasons. Those worst affected - women, children, Aids patients and the elderly - have had to brave the cold as they keep vigil over their property.

While it may be true that the sprouting of illegal settlements and informal traders needed to be addressed, it is the manner in which it has been carried out that has raised the ire of Zimbabweans and the international community alike.

The question is: why did the authorities allow the situation to get out of hand in the first place? Their argument centres on the need to return the city of Harare to its former "sunshine status".

Yet what "sunshine" is possible when the devastating impact of the exercise on its citizens' dignity and humanity is completely ignored? More disturbing is that these are the experiences of Zimbabweans at a time when the country is neither under siege nor at war.

The callousness of the authorities was aptly captured in a statement by Augustine Chihuri, Zimbabwe's police commissioner, at a ceremony where he said: "We must clean the country of this crawling mass of maggots"

His statement was cruel, unwarranted and an insult to the dignity of Zimbabweans.

And if this was not enough, approximately 30 members of the Bulawayo based activist group, Women of Zimbabwe Arise, were arrested on June 18 for protesting against the state's continuing campaign against the urban poor. What do these actions say about the attitude of the state towards its most vulnerable citizens?

Displaced families have been put into temporary shelters - vegetable stalls, tents and farms - where there are neither suitable sanitary facilities nor fresh water. And those who are here are lucky - many more are living in the open. I shudder to think of how women, already traumatised by their forced removal, are managing to maintain their families.

And it's made even worse by the continued shortages of mealie meal and other basic commodities.

Zimbabwean media are filled with images of homeless women and children who, like Monalisa, have been stripped of their livelihood. The Daily Mirror quoted Shamiso Makamba, 23, who is living on the banks of the Mukuvisi River with her three children, all under five years old.

"Our lives have been destroyed. I was living in the Joburg Lines [in Mbare] with my younger brothers and sister while I made a living selling vegetables at the bus terminus. Now that they have destroyed our houses and prohibited us from selling our wares from Mbare Musika, we do not know what to do next," she said.

Fortunately Monalisa is still employed as a primary school teacher in one of Harare's high-density suburbs, Warren Park. While she has managed to keep her family alive, all her hard work has been "taken away by the stroke of a pen", she said.

"I have nowhere to go with my children. I have spent four days sleeping in the cold. Even if I get a place to live, I do not have the money to pay rent and transport to go to work. My husband is unemployed and I have three children who are all in school.

"I do not know how they are going to cope with the situation. "Accommodation is a problem in the city as several more affordable cottages I could have gone to rent with my family have been destroyed. Even Aeneas Chigwedere, the education minister, has admitted that schoolchildren who lived in these illegal homes have been forced to drop out of school. However his ministry is assessing the extent of the problem before they can act on the matter. But how long will it take for them to assess the matter while children miss out on classes?"

Monalisa has to start from scratch. Her children have been deprived of their right to a decent shelter.

"I have been made homeless in my country of origin, where can I go for refuge? We hope they are going to do something as this is a disaster."

She said she could only pray for divine intervention: "May God intervene before we perish."

*Not her real name.

By Loveness Jambaya  - Sunday Independent, SA

Loveness Jambaya is the Zimbabwe representative of the Gender and Media Southern African Network. This article is part of the Gender Links GEM Opinion and Commentary Service