Mugabe’s government accused of covering up mass human rights violations with a public relations exercise
Amnesty International has released a report today slamming the Zimbabwean government for its failure to address the mass human rights violations inflicted on a civilian population under Operation Murambatsvina. Operation Garikai was touted by the Zimbabwean government as the ‘real’ reason behind Operation Murambatsvina: “Operation Murambatsvina was not conceived as an end in itself but as a precursor to Operation Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle whose object is to provide decent and affordable accommodation”, it said.
The report once again calls attention to the illegality of Operation Murambatsvina under international law, emphasising that what happened was a gross violation of human rights. The government’s so-called attempt to improve accommodation - Operation Garikai - is a dismal failure. Amnesty point out that out of the 92 460 homes destroyed by the government, only 3 325 have been replaced under Garikai. And of those 3 325 houses Amnesty notes that “government officials have made it clear that at least 20% of the housing will go to civil servants, police officers and soldiers - rather than those whose homes were demolished”.
For example, in Masvingo, where City Council officials confirmed that very few houses were destroyed during Operation Murambatsvina, approximately 100 Operation Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle houses have been built. City officials claimed at least 70 of these houses went to civil servants while the remaining 30 were allocated to people on the Council’s housing waiting list, who were not victims of Operation Murambatsvina.
Kolawole Olaniyan, Amnesty International’s Africa Programme Director, is unflinching in his criticism of Mugabe’s government: “The Zimbabwean government has attempted to cover up mass human rights violations with a public relations exercise“.
The report opens with two quotes:
“Please ask [President] Mugabe what it is they want from us. What is the dirt they want to clear out – is it us?”
“We have not been given an option of anywhere to go. It has merely been expected of us that we should ‘disappear,’ a feat we are by no means capable of. As far as I know, nobody in these areas of those affected by Operation Murambatsvina has benefited from the Operation Garikai housing delivery programme. Thus we have absolutely nowhere to go.”
It is real voices like these that drive home the effect of Murambatsvina on ordinary lives. Here are a few more real experiences, selected at random from the report:
A widow in Bulawayo whose rental accommodation was destroyed described how she now lives in a bathroom along with her son in a house shared by three family groups. In Victoria Falls Amnesty International found a man living in a room intended to be a toilet. His rental accommodation - a backyard cottage(4) - had also been destroyed during Operation Murambatsvina.
A woman living with HIV/AIDS who lost her rental accommodation during Operation Murambatsvina was found living under plastic at the back of her parents’ home, as the family refused to allow her or her four children into the main house due to her evident illness.
“We were told by [a government official] that we would not benefit from the new housing because we could not afford it. We said we could pay but then they asked for bank account details and pay slips, and we do not have these things. We are decent people. We never used to beg or scrape for food. We used to look after ourselves, not survive on handouts. Amnesty should tell our story because we have been told by [the official] that we are hidden people.”
At Hopley, which has an estimated population of 2,000 households, less than 150 individual household ecological toilets were reported to be completed one year after the camp opened, with plans to construct a further 1,400. The site is also served by approximately 150 communal toilets. The city employee to whom Amnesty International spoke, who had visited Hopley camp, stated: “people still defecate in the bush. There are some [pit latrines] but a 150sq meter stand is too small for a [pit latrine] to be hygienically there.”
The majority of those affected by the government’s indiscriminate clampdown on the informal sector were poor women. One organisation providing credit to micro-businesses, including many of those engaged in street vending and trading, described the impact: “Our business has totally changed. We do not work with the poorest anymore. They are gone. 85 per cent of our clients were poor women, and they have been driven out of business by Operation Murambatsvina.”
“I was selling in a public place before Operation Murambatsvina but I was arrested. Now you have to find a corner where they can’t find you. If police get you they take all your goods and you have to pay a fine…When the police come I run away. I hide my goods and run. If I carried my goods I could not run fast enough. I run away because I can’t afford the fine.”
Please visit the links in this post to read the full reports on the Amnesty site.
