Newspaper billboards today read ‘beer prices slashed’

Well, that’s OK then. We can all afford to get smashed drunk, and maybe that way we can get through the elections next year, endure the Mugabe regime a bit longer.

In fact, if we get really really really drunk – so drunk we can’t think, speak or walk – maybe we won’t care that we can’t feed or educate our children; that we have no jobs; that nothing works anymore.

Is this Zanu PF’s idea of a joke? Or are they really so desperate they have no idea what to do anymore, so getting the nation drunk seems like a good plan.

Its farcical!

The background to this is as follows: the Zanu PF government, with predictable economic stupidity, has announced sweeping price cuts in a bid to curb inflation (this is now ‘officially’ at 4,500% so unofficially is bound to be much higher). Industry Minister Obert Mpofu announced price cuts of up to two-thirds on a range of basic goods and services.

Apparently the state-controlled media have been asked to comply as well – something I’m delighted and amused about – and the response from the Justin Mutasa, chief executive of ‘The Horrid’, the main government mouthpiece, said the price of newspapers would go down only when the cost of newsprint, ink and other materials went down. “We welcome the latest intervention in the spirit that the same will be extended to suppliers.”

Welcome to the real world Justin!

Given that this is a government with degrees in violence and masters of verbal intimidation, we should know by now that the policy will be accompanied by viciousness and threats. So it comes as no surprise to hear that a unit drawn from Zimbabwe’s security agencies has been tasked to enforce the cuts. This will be the vicious Green Bombers, no doubt.

The problem is, the country is on its knees and a lot of businesses survive by buying foreign currency on the black market and buying supplies in from outside Zimbabwe. They are forced to price their goods according to the costs there. Is Mpofu going to send his green bombers across the borders to threaten and intimidate South African and Botswanan suppliers if they don’t drop their prices as well. Honestly, is the man a lunatic?

Businesses are struggling to work out what exactly is required, but no one seems to know. Rumours of managers and shop owners being arrested are already circulating. The price slashes mean that businesses will have to sell goods at lower prices than they paid for them – immediate losses across the board if they do this. A few people I know have simply closed their doors to traders: if they drop their prices, their businesses will have to be closed for good. Very few are making profits these days, most are ticking over, trying to keep their businesses alive as long as they possibly can.

A friend of mine speculates that the real reason behind this is probably a calculated attempt to force businesses under so that they have to lay off staff. This will leave the population even more unemployed and desperate as supplies dry up. Maybe they’ll take to the streets then and start rioting. My friend thinks that if that happens, Mugabe doesn’t have to bother with elections, he’ll just declare a state of emergency and rule openly through fear and curfews and use of force from the army. It’s a plausible hypothesis to me, because he is that egocentric (I believe) and he certainly is that evil, but why would younger members of Zanu PF go along with this. That’s what’s baffling. Is that old man so important that they’d scupper all their futures just to sustain him a few years longer?

I am quite looking forward to seeing how ‘The Horrid’ copes. Great! That’s one ‘business’ I wont be sad to see fail – and I’ll especially enjoy it if it fails because of Zanu PF’s lunacy.

I have lots of questions, and am completely stunned with disbelief at the stupidity of what’s going on.

But, hey, I should look on the bright side; at least I can go out and get drunk!

Technorati Tags: Zimbabwe, beer, alcohol, economy, hyperinflation, inflation, Obert Mpofu, poverty, business, foreign currency

I just saw a packet of viennas for Z$997 000, yes you got it – nine hundred and ninety seven thousand dollars. If you consider that Gono(rrhea) slashed three zeros from our currency less than a year ago, that makes it in reality Z$997 million. Ok, I know that viennas have always been a bit of a luxury, but the meltdown is now nuclear reactor bubbling.

Please note that I said I SAW the viennas, because who the hell is going to pay that?

I just stared in open mouthed amazement. My house only cost me Z$25 000 in 1985, 4 bedrooms, garden, good location. In today’s terms that would be Z$25! So one packet of viennas today could have bought you 39,880 houses just twenty years ago!

Yes, we can all have a giggle at the numbers while sitting comfortably at our office computers, but my fear is lurking close to the surface. What are we going to do? How will this end? Will there be violence on the street or are we going to have a nation of gaunt, starving faces?

Technorati Tags: Zimbabwe, inflation, hyper-inflation, poverty

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Today, 26 June, is the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. One day out of a year to support the victims of torture is not enough in Zimbabwe. Every day should be a day where we support those who have suffered this horrific form of abuse at the hands of Mugabe and the Zanu PF regime.

You may have heard the phrase “winning hearts and minds” before, a political euphemism to describe a campaign to win over restive populations, usually in military situations but sometimes used during political campaigning too. The term is only as meaningful as the intentions of the speaker, and critics would argue that it is often little more than empty propaganda; nevertheless, “winning hearts and minds” is a useful marker to use to differentiate between Zanu PF policies, and the policies of some our neighbouring countries where human rights and democracy are important.

Look at the following quotes* made by Robert Mugabe over the years of his stranglehold on power – are these the statements of a man who is concerned with ‘winning over hearts and minds’?

1983 - in response to victims in the Gukurahundi:

“We have to deal with this problem quite ruthlessly. Don’t cry if your relatives get killed in the process … Where men and women provide food for the dissidents, when we get there we eradicate them. We don’t differentiate when we fight, because we can’t tell who is a dissident and who is not.”

2000:

“Those who try to cause disunity among our people must watch out because death will befall them…”

2002 - At a party conference in Victoria Falls:

“This is total war. We will have a central command centre. This is war, it is not a game. You are all soldiers of ZANU (PF) for the people. When we come to your province we must see you are ready. When the time comes to fire the bullet, the ballot, the trajectory of the gun must be true.”

2006:

“We hear others say we want to go into the streets to demonstrate, to unseat a legitimately elected government. It will never happen and we will never allow it. If a person now wants to invite his own death, let him go ahead.”

2007 - Directly after the world had seen the evidence of police brutality in the form of images of bruised and badly injured civic leaders, an unrepentant Robert Mugabe uttered these ugly words:

“Our arms of Government, the police will act very vigorously and severely on those who go on a defiance campaign. We hope they have learned a lesson. If they have not, then they will get similar treatment.”

The combination of real violence combined with public promises of more violence and threats of reprisals clearly reveal that this regime is not at all interested in winning over the “hearts and minds” of the population. On the contrary, torture, violence and mass intimidation are carefully used, with calculated deliberation, to trample on the care and consideration that Zimbabweans have for one other – to create divisions, to fragment our society, to drive us apart and turn us against each other. Zanu PF’s tactics of force-feeding our nation a diet of lies, hate and fear is an attempt to fill our hearts and minds with anxiety and dread, to use torture and intimidation as a tool to control us. They want to bruise and damage our hearts; they seek to scar and break our minds.

There are many among us who have been kicked and literally felt the hard boots of cruel thugs, or felt blows being delivered with hatred on their bodies. Many who have suffered terrible physical injuries and still struggle today to reclaim their minds from the awfulness of their experiences. Those who haven’t felt those blows may consider themselves ‘lucky’ to have not had the experience.

But don’t kid yourself: when the Zanu PF government tortures a few amongst us, we all end up carrying the burden of fear and we all share the scars of pain. The Mugabe regime understands this, and deliberately builds seeks to maximize the effects of mass torture, riding high on the symptoms they provoke in an entire nation of people.

The UN Convention Against Torture defines the term as follows:

“Torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.”

So ‘torture’ includes deliberate state-sanctioned verbal abuse, intimidation, threats of violence, promises of reprisals – all delivered with the purpose of intimidation and coercion.

This is Mugabe’s Zimbabwe: as a nation we are all subjected to regular threats of death, threats of violence, and non-specific but all-encompassing promises of “wrath”, whatever that may mean. All of this is mainlined directly into our private lives and homes through our televisions, radios and newspapers, right to where our parents and children can see and hear it too.

The intimidation has no boundaries and extends into every aspect of our lives: our need to source food, our need to buy petrol, to run our businesses, to provide healthcare to the sick among us, to educate our children. Every facet of our lives, what is important to us as civilised human beings, has been infiltrated with the Zanu PF policy of violence and verbal filth.

The price that torture exacts on its victims is considerable. A study** carried out by psychologists between two groups of people – those who had never experienced torture, and those who had – found clear evidence of significant consequences. As a person living in Zimbabwe, ask yourself if you, or anyone you know, experiences symptoms like these (all of these being symptoms extracted from the study results): nightmares; diminished interest in previously enjoyed activities; restricted expectations; sleep disturbance; irritability; concentration impairment; hyper vigilance; startled reactions; living with a continued state of tension; avoidance of trauma and any thoughts of causes of trauma; detachment from others.

It simply isn’t possible for a nation of people to live unaffected by an atmosphere of pervasive fear. Nor is it possible for a nation to avoid the reverberations of fear and intimidation that occur when a few among us are singled out for deliberate calculated violence and cruelty. When Mugabe’s police / army / green bombers / war veterans torture some of our friends and colleagues, all of us end up with a burden that feels slightly heavier, all of us inherit a little of the fear, all of us feel a little more joy stolen from our lives, all of us sink a little further into despair struggling with the knowledge that our children’s future has become a little darker.

Victor Frankl was a man who experienced and witnessed the worst extremes of torture at the hands of the Nazis in the Concentration Camps during WWII. He understood the price that torture exacted from its victims, but he also recognised that humans have the capacity to withstand atrocities in even the most awful circumstances. Frankl says it best in his own words, and so we include here an extended quote:

“The experiences of camp life show that man does have a choice of action. There were enough examples, often of a heroic nature, which proved that apathy could be overcome, irritability suppressed. Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become moulded into the form of the typical inmate.

Seen from this point of view, the mental reactions of the inmates of a concentration camp must seem more to us than the mere expression of certain physical and sociological conditions. Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways, in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone. Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him – mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp.” ***

We all know that we are engaged in a fight for big important principles: democracy, justice, human rights, freedom and equality. But what we need to understand too, is that we are all engaged in a fight for our “hearts” and our “minds”. This is a fight that party politics can’t touch; we as individuals have to cling to our hearts and minds ourselves, and it us up to us alone to stand strong in the face of fear and intimidation.

We also need to understand that, just as we all can’t help but inherit a little of the burden of the victims pain, so we all have the power to choose to lighten the burdens of others. We need to stand by those who have felt the extreme range of violence, and we need to understand that by supporting them, we support ourselves too because in doing so we are ‘fighting back’ and salvaging a little bit of the humanity that the Mugabe regime tries so hard to strip from us.

26 June 2007 is the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. This is our day, a day when we need to spend time reflecting on how we can support those who have felt the worst extremes of torture, as well as supporting ourselves through the side-effects of having our minds washed daily with putrid abuse. We need to renew our commitment to our sense of humanity, our dignity, our sense of personal purpose and pride. And we need to do this knowing that we do so in the face of a deliberate calculated strategy that seeks to batter our hearts and minds into submission. Ask yourselves today if you really want to remain passive in the face of torture, or if you’d prefer to fight for your hearts and minds and reclaim some of your freedom. As Frankl would say, ‘choose your own attitude, choose your own way’. Only you can make that choice.

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* All quotes taken from the May 2007 report by the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, “Their words condemn them: The language of violence, intolerance and despotism in Zimbabwe”
** AM J Psychiatry 1994; 151: 76-81
[http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/reprint/151/1/76]
*** Taken from Frankl’s book titled “Man’s Search for Meaning”

Technorati Tags: Zimbabwe, torture, human rights, Mugabe, International Day in Support of Victims of Torture

The Gestapo is alive and well and it is practising its art in the police cells of Zimbabwe. Long after the age of barbarism, a despot is actively using torture to suppress a humble and peace loving people as he struggles against the tide to retain political power. It is not surprising as, not only does he sport the moustache, he is happy to be called Hitler. As recently as last week, members of the opposition have been abducted and tortured by militia masquerading as police officers, spurred on by Hitler’s exhortation to “bash” people who do not toe the line.

At the opening night of HIFA, one of the singers wailed Bob Marley’s line from Redemption song: “How long shall they kill our prophets, while we stand aside and look?”

Beware, the peaceful people of Zimbabwe are neither docile nor stupid! The regime mistakes patience and wisdom for weakness and fear. Let it be known that the list of names of the perpetrators of torture is on record and growing. Justice will prevail. She beckons from the halls of the International Criminal Court and no person will have been a victim in vain. Modern society has a funny habit of keeping a memory. Oral history fades, modern technology keeps it alive.

Meanwhile, we appeal to those that are at a safe distance from harms way to not let up in their condemnation of what is going on in Z. Societies thrive when individuals are held accountable. There is a group of some few hundred men and women who are holding an entire population to ransom and we ask you to bear witness to this moment in Zimbabwe history. Zimbabweans on their part will not abandon their country even in the face of torture because we know Justice will prevail through your good works.

To the diplomats, we urge you to ask your governments to maintain the pressure. Please keep the facts flowing to your respective capitals and let the truth be known about this tyrant. He must not be allowed to strut the world’s stages and posture while his hands drip with the blood of innocents.

To the brave doctors, nurses and psychiatrists, we say persevere. It is getting darker and darer and there must be a heavy toll on your weary minds working without drugs, electricity and with extremely low wages. The weak and helpless need you. Stay and help record every detail for justice will prevail.

To the real police, we say resign rather than sup at the devil’s table for while your tummy may be full for a few hours, your mind will not recover from the torture of a fellow human being. This is not what the war of liberation was for. The sacrifice of your older brothers and sisters will have been in vain when you actively maim their siblings twenty seven years after “liberation”. We were not meant to be liberated in to captivity. Do not completely lose your humanity.

To the people: The war for liberation was a huge sacrifice. It must never be in vain. Your minds, souls and bodies are tortured today. Tomorrow, we should be ready to testify against those in your midst who deprive mothers of the joy of seeing their children grow up. Parents should not bury their children.

On this international day of torture, it is not about slavery, colonialism or diplomacy. It is about human lives, physical pain, humiliation and degradation, emotional scars … all to keep a fearful ageing despot in power. And it is not right. Let the world speak!

Technorati Tags: International Day of Support for the Victims of Torture, Zimbabwe, Mugabe, justice, freedom, human rights

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The Zimbabwe dollar crashed dramatically moving from 180 000 to the US$ to as much as 350 000. One side effect of this is the dangerous impact that rapid devaluation has on cash flow as well as cash resources. In the space of just 5 trading days cash requirements have all but doubled and there is a rush on banks to provide the balance. Presently, the Reserve Bank has decreed that no company can issue a check exceeding 50 million dollars and this recent devaluation has resulted in a massive increase in the number of electronic transactions that must take place. The consequence of this is that there is huge congestion in the system and such transactions are taking up to 4 days to complete which, in itself, means losses of up to 15% over that time period. This is directly related to day by day inflation. More and more companies are beginning to “dollarize” in order to protect their companies.

Technorati Tags: Zimbabwe, Business Watch, economy, devaluation, inflation, economic crash, currency

The definition of a clinical psychopath fits the description of Robert Mugabe so perfectly, it is spine-chilling:

“In current clinical use, psychopathy is most commonly diagnosed using the checklist devised by Emeritus Professor Robert Hare. He describes psychopaths as “intraspecies predators” who use charm, manipulation, intimidation, and violence to control others and to satisfy their own selfish needs. Lacking in conscience and in feelings for others, they take what they want and do as they please, violating social norms and expectations without guilt or remorse. What is missing, in other words, are the very qualities that allow a human being to live in social harmony.” (Wikipedia)

Could it be that the Zimbabwean President is insane? A few examples of his behaviour would seem to bear this out:

• His theft by violence and manipulation of every election since 1990, while insisting that democratic principles were being upheld.
• The creation of the 5th Brigade, followed by the Green Bombers (Youth Brigade); both militias deliberately trained and deployed for one purpose, to murder and mutilate defenceless citizens.
• The Gukurahundi massacres in Matabeleland – with no subsequent remorse or guilt shown.
• His sincere assertion that: “No-one could have managed the (Zimbabwe) economy better than me.”
• Operation Murambatsvina in urban centres nation-wide, followed by a second, pitiless repetition of the ‘clearouts’.
• Gloating over the prospect of starving to death his political opponents in Matabeleland.

Most Zimbabweans by now have noticed a clear trend: Mugabe’s reaction to negative emotions is to commit impulsive, violent acts. He has exhibited this behaviour every time he is challenged or frustrated, or when he feels insulted – e.g. by the intrepid Peter Tatchell. The trend started mildly, with small things such as creating a law against insulting the President, but has escalated rapidly since then. His reaction to defeat in the Constitutional referendum in 2000 was dazed disbelief, after which he unleashed the violent land invasions and farm evictions. Whenever he sees a real or imagined threat to his rule, he perpetrates vicious warfare against the unarmed population, while at the same time seeing it as “preserving the peace”!

During his career Mugabe has often changed the law of the land in order to justify and allow his actions. This is consistent with psychopathic behaviour:

“It is thought that any emotions which the primary psychopath exhibits are the fruits of watching and mimicking other people’s emotions. Psychopaths show poor impulse control and a low tolerance for frustration and aggression… However, they understand that society expects them to behave in a conscientious manner, and therefore they mimic this behavior when it suits their needs.”

It would thus surprise nobody if Mugabe put a bill through his parliament to legalise murder and torture. He would then feel that he had done the right thing in terms of societal requirements. More importantly he would expect to be in a position to claim innocence in the event of having to face someone else’s justice.

“Nothing I have done is illegal,” he would proudly declare – and believe it!

The Zimbabwean President may also be schizophrenic, as evidenced by the fact that he always refers to himself in the third person.

“We”, he often says,“Do not tolerate any threat to our security…”

But perhaps he simply wishes so ardently to be the like the Queen that he mimics her royal plural (a custom dating from the time when a sovereign was believed to rule by divine appointment). One of Mugabe’s favourite words is ‘sovereignty’.

His narcissism is evident in all that he does and says; another major symptom of the psychopath. He believes himself to be irresistibly attractive – handsome, virile, a genius and practically immortal. He revels in the admiration of his fellow African heads of state and the attention of the world media.

No reasoning, nor appeals for compassion or mercy has the slightest effect on Zimbabwe’s head of state. He has boasted of his ‘degrees in violence” and that his perceived enemies “must fear death.” But he has never publicly uttered a word of compassion, pity or kindness. The closest he has come to showing remorse for the Matabeleland massacres, is to describe them as “ a moment of madness” – perhaps he knows he is a monster. He prefers to see Zimbabwe in a state of chaos and misery, than to consider any relaxation of his death grip on personal power and prestige. His manipulative cunning – yet another hallmark of the psychopath – is well known even among his closest associates.

“They have no empathy, remorse, anxiety or guilt in relation to their behavior. In short, they truly are devoid of conscience.”

If the President is mentally ill, could a spell in hospital straighten him out, enabling a welcome return to good governance?

Apparently not: “..(Psychopaths) are generally considered to be not only incurable but also untreatable.”

It is easy for the layman to conclude, from the abundant clues on public record, that Robert Mugabe is a human predator with an incurable sickness. If that is the case, he is unfit to hold office. A professional psychological assessment would be very interesting.

The Zimbabwean constitution allows for a President to be removed from office in the event of insanity. If the evidence contained in Robert Mugabe’s words and actions over the last ten years was analysed, and an official diagnosis of illness reached, could a motion for impeachment be tabled in Parliament?

And who would be in a position to try?

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United States Ambassador Christopher Dell says President Robert Mugabe plunged Zimbabwe into the current socio-economic and political mess because he never realized his expiry date after independence amid indications that the country will hit a record inflation rate of 1 500 000 percent by the end of this year.

Speaking to journalists on Monday this week in the second capital Bulawayo where he paid his last visit before departing to his new diplomatic post in Afghanistan, Dell said Mugabe should have gracefully left his presidential post long back and handed power to his successor.

He said: “Here is a man who has plunged his unquestionably huge historical role of the liberation struggle, a legacy that everybody should be proud of.

“Sadly, his (Mugabe’s) problem is that he did not realise his expiry date. He has stayed in power for too long and squandered his legacy resulting in the current economic disaster and oppression of his people.”

He said Mugabe was a great man who was supposed to leave a great legacy but decided to ruin his life by clinging onto power.

“The further you (Mugabe) run the more you get nowhere and … in turn get too exhausted,” said the controversial ambassador who has over the years declined to be bullied by Mugabe who has constantly blamed the US and Britain for causing the current chaos in Zimbabwe through imposing crippling sanctions.

Dell said in the 1980s, Zimbabwe was a symbol of African hope but today it had serious social, economic and political problems which it would fail to solve single-handedly.

He said: “Many economists, businesspeople and key stakeholders agree that Zimbabwe’s problems cannot be solved by this country alone. The country needs a lot of help but we are saying there should be major reforms such as the return of the rule of law and free and fair elections if we are to assist Zimbabwe.

“There is a strong belief that the country will hit a record inflation figure of 1 500 000 percent by the end of the year leading to the possible collapse of the economy. No country has ever sustained an inflation figure with four digits.”

Turning to next year’s parliamentary and presidential polls, he said the whole world was eager to see the outcome of South Africa’s current mediation process.

Dell said: “If the South African mediation process results in free and fair elections, we will recognize the outcome of the elections as representing the will of the people of Zimbabwe.

“If the election results are fraudulent and the current regime steals the vote, then Zimbabwe will not possibly recover from the current mess. Everything depends on Thabo Mbeki (SA president).”

Sokwanele Note:

The Guardian Newspaper (UK) carry an article today that features an interview with Christopher Dell. Read it here.

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Yesterday was World Refugee Day. Many Zimbabweans have been left homeless and struggling to survive as a result of the government’s senseless ‘Operation Murambatsvina’ – a policy of ‘clearing out the trash’, which manifested itself in the destruction of homes, trading stalls and the theft of property. What kind of leaders, are these, who destroy peoples’ homes at the height of a harsh winter leaving women and children at the mercy of the elements? What kind of mind conceives such an evil and heartless thought? We asked a supporter to write us a piece that included real-life stories of Murambatsvina refugees in Zimbabwe. Names have been changed in this article.

It is winter again, a time when the majority of Zimbabweans are reflecting on the beginning of the most barbaric and catastrophic act, by a totalitarian regime, in 2005. The satanic act, which was engaged without proper consideration of the repercussions, continues to wreak havoc on the lives of millions of poor Zimbabweans. Since 2005, winter has been characterized with bitter memories of the loss of homes, house hold property, flea markets, offices, the pain from beatings and torture and unfortunate deaths of some loved ones, during another act of madness by Mugabe, the second after Gukurahundi.

Mugabe, Chihuri and Chombo defended “Op M” (Operation Murambatsvina) as a clean up exercise meant to wean the unwanted garbage, which later turned out to be humans in the form of city dwellers, perceived to the sympathetic to the opposition MDC.

Tempers were beginning to boil two months after another rigged 2005 parliamentary election which pitted the ruling Zanu PF party against the MDC, giving the ruling party the required two thirds, to amend the constitution. To counter a possible uprising, Mugabe acting upon intelligence from the JOC (Joint Operation Command) embarked on the operation which not only caused massive sufferings but invited condemnations from the UN and the world over.

Society was disintegrated, those with rural homes leaving towns for good. The remaining folks were with either forcibly moved to unknown places or detention centers where they were quarantined. Sources of income were destroyed and rentals shot to alarming rates, making the cost of living in cities very high. The drama is still unfolding.

Sally Phiri (35), a mother of three and a widow, had her flea markets along what was formerly Union Avenue and Rezende Street, closed, losing all her wares in the process (the Police and City Police claimed vendors goods for themselves).

“I lost everything, they took goods worth $30 million by then, I remember a police officer complaining that we should suffer because we voted for MDC” Sally Phiri said.

Back home, Sally’s brick walled cabin was destroyed in Mbare, leaving her with nowhere to go. As a ‘Phiri’, Sally’s origin is Malawi – a country she has never even visited before. At the Malawi High Commission, she was asked to denounce Zimbabwean citizenship before attaining Malawian status since she is above 21 years of age. The dilemma Sally found herself in has reduced her to a beggar, and she now lives in the open air in the same yard of her former lodgings.

Sally’s new home has beds, wardrobe, cardboard boxes and plastic functioning as walls, exposing her and her three children to cold and rain.

Sally Phiri is not the only one in this predicament. Currently in most high-density areas of Harare, families are still sleeping in the open, especially in back yards. Those with houses had their extensions destroyed leaving as much as twelve people in the same family sleeping in two or three roomed houses. Thus the social moral fibre has been eroded since boys and girls are forced to sleep in one room.

“All I need is a place where I can access a toilet and clean water. I will never forgive Mugabe and his people for doing this to me” said Sally.

In Kuwadzana Stembile Moyo (38) a divorcee and mother of four now lives in an old and disused car at a former home industry site where the only toilet was closed. The place has no clean water and the few families now living there fetch their water from a well, where litter such as “used condoms” are found.

“ I cannot afford to pay rent anymore so I was chased from by lodgings. I am a vendor at a beerhall as well as a lady of the night, but I am still finding it tough because customers are shying away because of the HIV/AIDS scourge” said Moyo.

Both Phiri and Moyo expressed bitterness at the criteria used by the Zimbabwean government to allocate “Operation Garikayi” stands and homes. Coincidentally they both registered to benefit from “GariKai” at the same time but were shocked to hear that only civil servants from the Zimbabwe Republic Police, Zimbabwe National Army, Air Force and Zanu PF activists and other government departments benefited instead.

Those allocated stands at Snake Park, Hopely Farm and Calidonia Farm, have however not been allowed to finish building, not even their toilets. The places do not have running water except at Caledonia farm, where an NGO donated a borehole, which also feeds the entire Tafara area. The plastic walls demarcating the houses have been blamed for fueling prostitution as privacy no longer exists.

School girls have also been reported to be engaging in prostitution as well because their families were displaced by Op M and forced to relocate to areas far from their schools. Parents are failing to give them bus fares, leaving them vulnerable.

In the run up to the Budiriro by-election in 2006, unconfirmed reports from MDC indicate that, most people who registered to benefit from Op Garikayi had their names obliterated from the voters roll. MDC argued that without a general nation wide election, there was no way the government could have known who might have relocated from Budiriro. In essence the Mugabe regime started their preparation for the 2008 election long back.

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Technorati Tags: Zimbabwe, Murambatsvina, refugees, World Refugee Day, Mugabe, poverty, homeless