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Zimbabwe: Housing Tsunami Continues
AfricaFocus Bulletin
Jul 28, 2005 (050728)
(Reposted from sources cited below)
Editor's Note
Despite a devastatingly critical report by UN-HABITAT Director Anna
Tibaijuka, the government of Zimbabwe is continuing its drive to
destroy "illegal" housing and shops that is estimated to have made
at least 700,000 people homeless in the last two months.
Zimbabweans, rejecting the government's term Operation
Murambatsvina ("Clean Out Garbage") compare the assault on the
country's poor to a "tsunami."
The UN report was careful not to implicate President Robert Mugabe
directly in responsibility for the destruction, but said those
responsible should be held accountable. Also last week, renowned
Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka, speaking in South Africa, called for
African leaders to end their reluctance to criticize "rogues and
monsters" such as President Mugabe. "Bulldozers have been turned
into an instrument of governance and it is the ordinary people who
are suffering," he said, "it is a disgrace on the continent."
This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains a short update from the UN's
Integrated Regional Information Networks, and a background analysis
and critique by Zimbabwean human rights activist Mary Ndlovu, that
appeared in Pambazuka News earlier this month. It also contains the text of
the executive summary from Ms.Tibaijuka's report. The full report is available at:
http://www.un-habitat.org/documents/ZimbabweReport.pdf
For previous issues of AfricaFocus Bulletin on Zimbabwe, see
http://www.africafocus.org/country/zimbabwe.php
For a wide range of reports from Zimbabwe civil society, see
http://www.kubatana.net
++++++++++++++++++++++end editor's note+++++++++++++++++++++++
Zimbabwe: Evictions Continue Despite International Condemnation
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks
http://www.irinnews.org
July 25, 2005
Harare
[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United
Nations.]
Ignoring a call by the United Nations to halt evictions of people
living in unauthorised housing, Zimbabwean police on Friday ordered
residents out of Porta Farm, one of Harare's oldest informal
settlements, about 35 km west of the capital.
Since the launch of Operation Murambatsvina ('Clean Out Garbage')
in mid-May, the UN estimates that 700,000 people have been made
homeless or lost livelihoods as a result of the blitz on the
informal homes and unlicensed vending of the largely urban poor.
A report by UN-HABITAT Executive Director Anna Tibaijuka after a
two-week fact-finding mission to Zimbabwe recommended that the
evictions, "carried out in an indiscriminate and unjustified
manner, with indifference to human suffering", be stopped.
"The government of Zimbabwe should immediately halt any further
demolitions of homes and informal businesses and create conditions
for sustainable relief and reconstruction for those affected," read
the report, presented last week to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
The latest police operation at Porta Farm was the second time in a
month they had tried to clear the 7,500 settlers from the area. At
the first attempt in June, homes and markets were demolished to
force people to return to their rural areas, or to a holding camp
at Caledonia Farm, 15 km north of Harare, but many of the residents
refused to move.
Aid workers said on Monday that the police were determined to clear
the remaining people. Residents were being grouped according to
place of origin in preparation for their transport out.
The evictions, part of a drive to "clean up" the cities, have been
carried out despite the Porta Farm community having won a high
court order last year allowing them to stay.
When IRIN visited the settlement on Sunday, around 70 policemen
were monitoring the removal of the residents, who are among the
poorest and most disadvantaged in Harare.
"We have been camping here since Friday, and we will only go when
all the people have been removed. This time our bosses have
instructed us not to use force on the settlers," said a police
officer - a reference to the death of 11 people when police used
teargas in a bid to evict residents in September last year.
In one corner of the camp, reduced to rubble and heaps of household
goods, five young men defiantly beat a drum and danced to an
improvised song vowing not to move. Elsewhere, people were packing
their belongings into trucks provided by the army and Harare
municipality.
"I returned from Caledonia Farm two weeks ago because that place
was like a prison for me and my three children," said Tabita
Mugomba, a 38-year-old widow.
When the home she had lived in for 10 years was demolished in June,
she went to Caledonia but left most of her belongings at Porta.
"Besides, I had to fend for my children, who have since stopped
going to school. Here at Porta Farm I had been surviving by selling
fish to motorists," said Mugomba, holding the hand of her thin
seven-year-old boy.
Mugomba said she would try and move in with her brother and his
family in Harare's working-class suburb of Mbare but was unsure
about how well she would be received, as she had been out of touch
with him for some time.
Porta Farm dates back to 1991, when the government moved thousands
of people from unauthorised settlements in Harare; because it was
supposed to be temporary, basic amenities like water, schools and
health services were never provided.
Tibaijuka's report said Operation Murambatsvina has indirectly
affected 2.4 million people, and the humanitarian consequences "are
enormous".
"It will take several years before the people and society as a
whole can recover. There is an immediate need for the government of
Zimbabwe to recognise the virtual state of emergency that has
resulted, and to allow unhindered access by the international and
humanitarian community to assist those that have been affected,"
the report noted.
The government has dismissed the UN's findings as biased. Local
Government Minister Ignatius Chombo told IRIN that the people had
been evicted from illegal settlements, "and I don't think the UN
can sanction illegality".
He stressed that the government's new corrective programme,
Operation Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle ('Stay well'), would develop
housing at an estimated cost of US $300 million. "Our people are
much happier because the government is giving them land, they are
getting stands, and are getting government assistance," Chombo
insisted.
On Monday only five families out of the original 4,500 people
remained in Caledonia Farm after the authorities moved to close the
transit camp at the end of last week. The government said that
those without accommodation in urban areas and who were unemployed
would be relocated to their rural homes where chiefs were asked to
give them land and farming inputs.
Critics have questioned the ability of the cash-strapped government
to afford the housing programme's price tag, and pointed to the
immediate needs of the people - especially the young, sick and
elderly - displaced by Operation Murambatsvina.
"The government is acting irrationally and hypocritically, because
it is causing further suffering to the very people it says it is
providing accommodation to," said Welshman Ncube, secretary-general
of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.
Zimbabwe's Tsunami
Mary Ndlovu
Pambazuka News 214
July 06, 2005
http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?issue=214
Mary Ndlovu is a Zimbabwean human rights activist
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:
- 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;
- 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;
- 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;
- 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;
- It has been undertaken in a typically ZANU PF way - suddenly,
violently, illegally and recklessly, without regard to the
disastrous consequences;
- 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?
Report of the Fact-Finding Mission to Zimbabwe to assess the Scope
and Impact of Operation Murambatsvina by the UN Special Envoy on
Human Settlements Issues in Zimbabwe
Mrs. Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka
18 July, 2005.
Executive Summary
On 19 May 2005, with little or no warning, the Government of
Zimbabwe embarked on an operation to "clean-up" its cities. It was
a "crash"operation known as "Operation Murambatsvina", referred to
in this report as Operation Restore Order. It started in the
Zimbabwe capital, Harare, and rapidly evolved into a nationwide
demolition and eviction campaign carried out by the police and the
army. Popularly referred to as "Operation Tsunami" because of its
speed and ferocity it resulted in the destruction of homes,
business premises and vending sites. It is estimated that some
700,000 people in cities across the country have lost either their
homes, their source of livelihood or both. Indirectly, a further
2.4 million people have been affected in varying degrees. Hundreds
of thousands of women, men and children were made homeless, without
access to food, water and sanitation, or health care. Education for
thousands of school age children has been disrupted. Many of the
sick, including those with HIV and AIDS, no longer have access to
care. The vast majority of those directly and indirectly affected
are the poor and disadvantaged segments of the population. They
are, today, deeper in poverty, deprivation and destitution, and
have been rendered more vulnerable.
Operation Restore Order took place at a time of persistent budget
deficits, triple-digit inflation, critical food and fuel shortages
and chronic shortages of foreign currency. It was implemented in a
highly polarized political climate characterized by mistrust, fear
and a lack of dialogue between Government and local authorities,
and between the former and civil society. There is no doubt
therefore that the preliminary assessment contained in this report
constitutes but a partial picture of the far-reaching and long-term
social, economic, political and institutional consequences.
In assessing the scope and impact of the operation and the ability
of the Government of Zimbabwe and of the humanitarian community to
respond, the Special Envoy's mission, supported by the United
Nations Country Team, met with President Robert Mugabe, a
crosssection of members of his cabinet and various people and
institutions. These include central and local government officials,
political parties, religious leaders, civil society organisations,
the private sector, professional and trade associations, academia,
the donor and humanitarian community, as well as some of the people
affected. The mission was further informed by hundreds of written
submissions and testimonials, official records and legal documents,
interviews, articles and reports made by the media, and by site
visits across the country. Furthermore, the mission witnessed
first-hand the process of demolition and eviction and met with many
of its victims.
The Special Envoy's findings and their implications are as follows:
(i) Operation Restore Order, while purporting to target illegal
dwellings and structures and to clamp down on alleged illicit
activities, was carried out in an indiscriminate and unjustified
manner, with indifference to human suffering, and, in repeated
cases, with disregard to several provisions of national and
international legal frameworks. Immediate measures need to be taken
to bring those responsible to account, and for reparations to be
made to those who have lost property and livelihoods. In parallel,
other confidence-building measures need to be taken to restore
dialogue between the Government of Zimbabwe and civil society.
(ii) Even if motivated by a desire to ensure a semblance of order
in the chaotic manifestations of rapid urbanisation and rising
poverty characteristic of African cities, none the less Operation
Restore Order turned out to be a disasterous venture based on a set
of colonial-era laws and policies that were used as a tool of
segregation and social exclusion. There is an urgent need to
suspend these outdated laws and to review them within the briefest
time possible to ensure the sustainability of humanitarian response
and to set the stage for meaningful physical reconstruction and the
restoration of livelihoods;
(iii) The humanitarian consequences of Operation Restore Order are
enormous. It will take several years before the people and society
as a whole can recover. There is an immediate need for the
Government of Zimbabwe to recognise the virtual state of emergency
that has resulted, and to allow unhindered access by the
international and humanitarian community to assist those that have
been affected. Priority needs include shelter and non-food items,
food and health support services.
(iv) Any humanitarian response can only be meaningful and
sustainable if it contributes to the long-term recovery and
reconstruction efforts of the Government and of its people.
Zimbabwe is not a country at war and it remains peaceful. By
African standards, it has a well maintained physical
infrastructure. The international community should engage the
Government of Zimbabwe and help it to address some of the issues
and causal factors that led to the present predicament. These
include, first and foremost, the lack of security of tenure for the
poor. They also include conflicting and outdated housing and urban
development policies, overlapping jurisdictions, and a lack of
clear definition of and respect for the respective roles and
competencies between central and local spheres of government. The
humanitarian response provides a unique opportunity and entry point
to link the provision of temporary shelter and other forms of
humanitarian assistance with immediate security of tenure for all
those affected and to prepare the ground for overcoming the
failures and inherent weaknesses in governance.
In view of the above, the Special Envoy proposes the following
recommendations for the Secretary General's consideration:
Recommendations that the Government of Zimbabwe should be
encouraged to undertake:
a. On Humanitarian Issues
Recommendation 1: An estimated 700,000 people in cities across the
country have either lost their homes or their livelihoods or both.
The Government of Zimbabwe should immediately halt any further
demolitions of homes and informal businesses and create conditions
for sustainable relief and reconstruction for those affected.
Recommendation 2: There is an urgent need for the Government of
Zimbabwe to facilitate humanitarian operations within a pro-poor,
gender-sensitive policy framework that provides security of tenure,
affordable housing, water and sanitation, and the pursuit of small
scale income-generating activities in a regulated and enabling
environment.
Recommendation 3: There is an immediate need for the Government of
Zimbabwe to revise the outdated Regional Town and Country Planning
Act and other relevant Acts, to align the substance and the
procedures of these Acts with the social, economic and cultural
realities facing the majority of the population, namely the poor.
Recommendation 4: There is an immediate need to revive dialogue and
restore trust between different spheres of government and between
Government and civil society. This process should emerge from a
broad-based consultation among all Zimbabwean stakeholders.
b. On Accountability and Legal Issues
Recommendation 5: The Government of Zimbabwe is collectively
responsible for what has happened. However, it appears that there
was no collective decision-making with respect to both the
conception and implementation of Operation Restore Order. Evidence
suggests it was based on improper advice by a few architects of the
operation. The people and Government of Zimbabwe should hold to
account those responsible for the injury caused by the Operation.
Recommendation 6: The Government of Zimbabwe should set a good
example and adhere to the rule of law before it can credibly ask
its citizens to do the same. Operation Restore Order breached both
national and international human rights law provisions guiding
evictions, thereby precipitating a humanitarian crisis. The
Government of Zimbabwe should pay compensation where it is due for
those whose property was unlawfully destroyed.
Recommendation 7: The wrecking of the informal sector by Operation
Restore Order will have detrimental effects at a time that the
economy remains in serious difficulties. Apart from drastically
increasing unemployment, the Operation will have a knock-on effect
on the formal economy including agriculture. The Government of
Zimbabwe has to undertake corrective policy reforms in
macro-economic management and governance issues, focusing on land
reform and land tenure with a view to provide secure tenure for the
poor both in rural and urban areas.
Recommendation 8: The Government of Zimbabwe should grant full
citizenship to those former migrant workers and their descendants
who have no such legal status. B. Recommendations for the United
Nations and the International Community
Recommendation 9: Operation Restore Order has precipitated a
humanitarian crisis of immense proportions. In an apparent
response, the Government of Zimbabwe has launched a counter
programme, Operation Garikai (Rebuilding and Reconstruction). The
Government itself, even with the best efforts, has limited capacity
to fully address the needs of the affected population without the
assistance of the international community. The United Nations
should therefore work with the Government of Zimbabwe to mobilize
immediate assistance from the international community to avert
further suffering, and encourage the Government to create
conditions for sustainable relief and reconstruction for those
affected.
Recommendation 10: The United Nations, working with the African
Union and the Southern African Development Community, at the
highest levels, should assist the Government of Zimbabwe to promote
real internal dialogue among its various constituencies on the one
hand, and dialogue with the international community on the other
hand, with a view to working out the modalities of returning
Zimbabwe into the international fold.
Recommendation 11: Although a case for crime against humanity under
Article 7 of the Rome Statute might be difficult to sustain, the
Government of Zimbabwe clearly caused large sections of its
population serious suffering that must now be redressed with the
assistance of the United Nations and the broader international
community. The international community should encourage the
Government to prosecute all those who orchestrated this catastrophe
and those who may have caused criminal negligence leading to
alleged deaths, if so confirmed by an independent internal
inquiry/inquest. The international community should then continue
to be engaged with human rights concerns in Zimbabwe in consensus
building political forums such as the UN Commission onHuman Rights,
or its successor, the African Union Peer Review Mechanism, and in
the Southern African Development Community.
Lessons Learned
Recommendation 12: Operation Restore Order has to be understood
within the broader context of the urbanization crisis in Africa. It
is recommended that the international community draws lessons from
the Zimbabwe crisis for the entire African continent and actively
support the implementation of the Habitat Agenda. It makes a
clarion call to the international community to realize that without
a more concerted approach to promote urban environmental
sustainability (Goal 7, target 10 on water and sanitation, and
target 11 on slum upgrading and prevention of the Millennium
Declaration), the other countries in Africa could well experience
another "Operation Restore Order" sooner than later.
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