Special Vigil to mark Murambatsvina Anniversary in London

IT’S A YEAR this week since the government of Zimbabwe embarked on its controversial Operation Murambatsvina programme that has been viewed by many as an effort to weaken the opposition and to punish the urban poor for voting for the opposition MDC during the disputed March parliamentary poll. The cities are traditionally MDC strongholds.
To remember the millions that were affected by the operation, Zimbabweans living in the UK will this Saturday hold a special vigil outside Zimbabwe House.

A Vigil spokesperson said people should come out and send a message to the Zanu PF government that the continued displacement of the poor was cruel.
“Since May 19 last year, the Zimbabwean government has been carrying out this brutal campaign of forced evictions under Operation Murambatsvina and we as Zimbabweans in the country and outside must team up to say No to such acts, it is unlawful to remove people from their homes and their jobs in a bid to protect your power base,” he said.

This week the police revealed more than 10 000 people, street children included, were being held at various points around the country in preparation to be sent back to their rural homes. The arrest of the 10 000 comes ahead of planned winter demonstrations by the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) and the MDC. Programmes have been lined up in Harare and Bulawayo to mark the anniversary of yet another sad chapter in Zimbabwe’s history.
Hundreds of thousands of families have lost their homes and livelihoods since the controversial programme that the UN has declared illegal with a special envoy, Anna Tibaijuka, calling on those behind the operation to be held responsible under the law.
Armed police moved into the suburbs, squatter camps and other areas all over the country, demolishing and torching tens of thousands of dwellings and the makeshift stalls of small traders in the “clean up” operation.  In some areas people were forced to destroy their own homes; in others the police used bulldozers, sledgehammers and flamethrowers.

The evictions began in the cities such as Harare, Bulawayo and Victoria Falls and were extended to small towns and rural areas all over the country. 

Although government officials characterised the operation, which was hugely criticised by the international community, human rights groups, political parties and non governmental organisations, as a crackdown against illegal housing and commercial activities, and to reduce the risk of the spread of infectious disease in these areas, some point out that many African countries have previously carried out similar slum clearances. Malawi, a country that recently named one of its donor-funded major roads after President Mugabe, has been carrying out a similar operation in one of its poort districts. The United Nations has described the Harare campaign as an effort to drive out and make homeless large sections of the urban and rural poor.

The Zimbabwean government still argues Operation Murambatsvina is about restoring order but the timing of the clearances, so soon after the disputed parliamentary elections on March 31, 2005, combined with the contradictory nature of the operation, has prompted commentators to state that there were alternative reasons for the demolitions.