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| "The situation is very serious in Zimbabwe when life expectancy goes from more than 60 years to just over 30 years in a 15-year span — it's a meltdown, it's not just a crisis, it's a meltdown." |
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Wednesday, 10 December 2008
Failing Zimbabwe
A cholera epidemic is sweeping across Zimbabwe, causing further suffering to millions of people already struggling to survive in a country close to systemic collapse as food shortages and hyperinflation continue to take their toll. |
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The BBC does not have permission to report from Zimbabwe, so the names of some contributors have been changed to protect identities.
HARARE: BRIAN HUNGWE
A strong odour pounces up your nose, choking it stone dry, as you drive into Harare's Mbare township past hostels and its popular market, Mbare Musika.
The stomach-churning stench is enough to kill your appetite for a week.
Raw sewage flows through Mbare Musika — Harare's rendezvous for farmers selling their produce.
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East of the township, more sewage flows effortlessly into the Mukuvisi River, one of the city's main suppliers of water.
Communal toilets in the surrounding hostels hosting hundreds of families have broken down.
As pumps are not working, sewage waste from burst pipes flows from the hostels' third floor down, leaving waste traces on the windows.
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And on the walls below, a thick dark layer of waste, hanging loose on windows has been accumulating over the past months.
It is a recipe for disaster, and a health scandal, according to a local priest.
"Even now, there are many sick people inside, they are frail, they can't walk and relatives don't have money to send them to hospital, so they are left to suffer," said Majorie, a middle-aged woman carrying a child on her back.
In the streets, piles of uncollected refuse are commonplace with flies feasting on the rubbish.
In this chaos, vendors selling tomatoes, mangoes and vegetables rove around.
Customers are still available. Some buy the produce and walk leisurely, eating mangoes, alongside streams of raw sewage to their hostels.
There is nothing they can do about it.
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In this crisis, statistics of people dying of cholera rise each day.
But it is not just killing people, it is devouring Africa's traditional norms and values.
When Ruth Huni, a woman living in Glen Norah township died last week there were just six relatives seated outside when I visited her home.
Zimbabwean funerals used to be huge affairs with hundreds of friends, family and well-wishers. But no more.
It was common knowledge she had died of cholera.
"Where are our values as Africans?" asked John Mkwananzi, her brother and a famous musician with the popular Runn Family group.
"They know she died of cholera.
"There are many friends, even relatives, around yet they are not visiting.
"Out of fear. I suppose," he said.
"What are we doing to our culture, if we can't pay condolences? Cholera is there, but we should rise above the problem and respect our cultural values that bind us together," he said.
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Christians are not taking chances either.
At St Peter's Catholic Church in Mbare, there is something special missing during and after fellowship.
"Our usual shaking of hands which is a sign of peace and reconciliation — our custom to do during mass, during the holy service — we had to abandon it because people are afraid it might lead to more transmission of the virus," says Father Oskar Wermter, of the Catholic Church.
"People refrain from it so we just nod at each other in a friendly manner or just clap our hands to ourselves [the] traditional [way]," he says.
After the Sunday service this week, there were hardly any hugs, handshakes, or kisses.
Raw sewage running behind the church, a few yards away, left an unsettling odour.
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Budiriro is Harare's worst hit township, recording close to 200 cholera-related deaths.
It is an opposition MDC stronghold.
"There is a feeling here that people are being punished for supporting the opposition," says resident Claudios Mkwati.
"Our local councillors and legislators can't do much, because the buck stops at the ministry of local government which provides the money," he explained.
The township has over 300,000 families.
Schools here in Harare are now officially closed for the Christmas holidays but most have been closed for months now.
The past schooling year has basically been one long break for the majority of pupils who have not attended a class in months because of the lack of teachers and unaffordable fees.
Most shop shelves remain empty of foodstuffs except for the few supermarkets in a position to sell imported goods, mostly available to those with foreign currency.
Their shelves are full but the items are so expensive that they are beyond the reach of most city dwellers.
MASVINGO: OWEN CHIKARI
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Health officials have said that at least 51 people here in Masvingo have died from cholera over the past two weeks and more than 1,500 cases have been reported.
There are strong fears that even more lives could be lost as the government has run out of the required medication to treat the affected.
Provincial medical director Julius Chirengwa said: "Although the situation appears to be under control the shortage of drugs and experienced staff still remain a challenge."
The critical food shortages which are forcing thousands of starving people to rely on wild fruits for survival is also worsening the situation because the fruits are not cleaned according to proper hygienic standards.
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Thousands of patients have been left stranded because almost all the government-run health institutions here have been closed indefinitely, owing to a lack of finance.
Masvingo general hospital — the province's sole referral centre — has also been closed.
Hospital superintendant Amadiof Shamu said: "We have closed all the wards and we are urging people with relatives at the institutions to come and collect them."
"I do not know where to go and what to do," said David Muyaka, a seriously ill patient who was ordered to leave hospital.
Striking doctors and nurses have refused to return to work until they are paid $2,500 (£1,690) per month.
Schools closed before the term had ended because teachers refused to work without being paid.
Policemen and soldiers were bankrolled by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe to oversee the end-of-year examinations.
However examination papers arrived late in the day at some centres, forcing students to write by candlelight.
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Government officials are denying claims that at least 20 people in the past fortnight have died from starvation in Masvingo province, saying the figures are exaggerated.
Yet a legislator in Masvingo West constituency, Tachiona Mharadze, said: "People are dying every day because of hunger. Over 20 people starved to death in my constituency alone last month."
A villager from neighbouring Gutu, Edson Marima explained: "We are now living like wild animals because we search for food every day.
"We rely on edible wild fruits and sometimes eat vegetables only because we have nothing else.
"Some people are starving to death due to these food shortages."
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MUTARE: DAVID FARIRA
Thirty people have died here in Manicaland province from the cholera epidemic sweeping across Zimbabwe.
About 450 cases have been reported.
Government officials conceded they were losing the battle.
While people are battling with the cholera threat, members of the Zimbabwe National Army are going from door-to-door in poor townships arresting residents found possessing foreign currency.
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Those suspected to have given accommodation to foreigners who flocked to the eastern border city to buy diamonds also fell prey to the marauding soldiers.
Those found with hard currency are taken to the police station and then driven to the Chiadzwa diamond fields to fill up the illegal mine gullies.
Once there, they are beaten up and ordered to sing songs in praise of the ruling Zanu-PF party and its leader President Robert Mugabe.
"It's a serious violation of rights," said Trust Manda, the regional co-ordinator of Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights.
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Teachers are still on strike, demanding decent salaries and better working conditions.
Non-governmental organisations are distributing food aid in rural areas after a failed agricultural season.
But the food aid is finding its way into the poor townships where it is being sold at hugely inhibitive prices.
Children are dropping out of school mainly because of hunger; and those that were at boarding schools are now at home because the fees are too high and there is no food any more.
BULAWAYO, THEMBA NKOSI
Bulawayo's city health department says only eight deaths have been recorded in the city and those, they say, came from elsewhere.
But this figure is disputed by doctors and residents.
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Bulawayo's ceremonial Mayor Thaba Moyo has said those who died of cholera came from Beitbridge, the town on the border with South Africa, 380km (236 miles) south.
Health officials in Beitbridge put the latest death toll at 56 but nurses have apparently told friends that as many as 80 people have died of the disease and the small mortuary is congested with decomposed bodies.
Villagers who live on the border with prosperous South Africa are crossing every day to seek medical attention at the hospitals in Musina town, about 10km (six miles) from the border.
The scale of the disease in Matabeleland is less serious than in Harare.
The cholera epidemic is one of the symptoms of a collapsed economy and health sector.
The crisis has also forced many schools to close. A situation made worse as thousands of Matabeleland's teachers have left the country for paying jobs in South Africa and Botswana.
Villagers in southern Matabeleland have appealed for more food aid as starvation worsens in the region.
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Aid agencies put the figure of the population needing food aid at three million but the government says only one million are in need.
Cholera and hunger are not the only headaches for President Robert Mugabe and his ruling elite in the region.
Their party, Zanu-PF, is struggling to prevent mass resignations of senior and junior officials in this region which supported Joshua Nkomo, not Robert Mugabe, during the 1970s liberation war and has never fully supported Mr Mugabe.
CHINHOYI: POTERAI BAKWA
The health system here in Mashonaland West province, where President Robert Mugabe hails from, is collapsing with the provincial hospital being the last of six district hospitals to close.
For the past month, trained senior nurses and doctors have not reported for duty.
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"The provincial referral hospital is being manned by student nurses and no operations are being conducted here," said a senior doctor, who refused to be named.
He added that they had to down tools after they failed to get their salaries from banks, where there are daily cash withdrawal limits. The daily limit cannot even buy a loaf of bread.
The cholera outbreak has hit Chinhoyi prison.
Seven inmates have reportedly died.
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"We have had seven casualties in prison and 16 more are under quarantine in one cell," said a prison guard, who cannot be named for fear of victimisation.
Provincial medical director Doctor Wenclilus Nyamayaro refused to comment, saying: "It's a security issue as it involves uniformed forces and I am not at liberty to comment."
In Karoi town, 204km (126 miles) north-west of Harare, immunisation programmes for children under five years old have been suspended.
Health workers at the hospital confirmed that immunisations for polio, measles, tetanus and other normally preventable and treatable diseases have had to be suspended as they have run out of the medication.
Last week district medical officer Dr Kudzai Zimbudzi was forced to carry out pauper burials for 10 bodies after mortuary attendants went on strike.
The corpses had been in the mortuary for three months — no-one had come to claim them.
Power cuts have badly affected mortuaries.
Schools officially close on Thursday for the Christmas holiday but for many, going to school has not been a reality for months.
Pupils, especially in rural areas, instead spend their days gathering wild fruits to eat.
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Teachers have joined the ranks of the country's starving professionals and many have turned to selling vegetables to put food on their tables.
In rural Hurungwe, teachers are not eligible for food aid.
"We are being sidelined by non-government organisations."
"We have to fetch wild fruits and edible roots for our survival," explained Sinikiwe, a teacher in remote Siakobvu, about 300km (186 miles) west of the capital, Harare.
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Many in those towns have resorted to becoming street vendors in Chirundu — the border post town before crossing into Zambia — as a means of survival.
"Vending is the only paying job in Zimbabwe where you will not get frustrated by any employer.
"Government has neglected us and this year was the worst in the education sector.
"The army invigilated the grade seven [primary school leaving] exams.
"It is disastrous for the country's future," said a former teacher.
In Karoi, only a handful of pupils were going to school. School enrolment has dropped significantly.
In rural Zvimba, Mr Mugabe's home, the villagers are fighting with donkeys for wild fruit to eat.
Meanwhile, lawyers for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change are still battling to get access to 15 of their supporters who were abducted in Banket, a farming town in Mashonaland West, four weeks ago.
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Among those abducted by suspected state security agencies is a two-year-old boy called Nigel who was with his mother, Violet Mupfuranhwewe.
MDC lawyer Alec Muchadehama said: "Our frantic efforts have failed to bring even Home Affairs Minister Kembo Mohadi and Police Chief Augustine Chihuri to comply with High Court ruling to bring the suspects to any police station or court.
"If the government can defy court orders with such immunity, then they will never respect rule of law and political affiliation in Zimbabwe politics."
HWANGE: JOEL GORE
The municipality of Victoria Falls has banned the sale of mangoes and fish in the resort town in a bid to control the spread of cholera.
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Mayor Nkosinathi Jiyane warned that anyone found selling fish, fresh or dry, and mangoes would be arrested and fined.
An anti-cholera campaign team has been formed and police are using loud speakers to announce precautions to be followed to prevent the spread of the disease.
Cholera has killed one person in Dete township and four in the urban area of Hwange despite government reports that the disease is under control.
Some residents in the province fear the disease might spread unabated with the onset of the rainy season because broken pipes have meant that a lot of business, health and education premises are now polluted with filthy and stagnant sewage.
In Hwange town, police and wildlife park rangers invaded the houses of owners suspected of selling uninspected meat.
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Their blitz has also affected the informal traders selling vegetables and tomatoes in the streets and at out-door markets.
Traditional chiefs as well as political and religious leaders are saying that people are dying of hunger because of the food shortages.
The MP for Binga South area, Joel Ghabuza, told a story of a grandmother and her two grandchildren who died after eating wild fruits they had not known were in fact poisonous.
And from reports going round, there are many other similar tales of needless deaths.
There is no food in the province and if donors fail to assist this coming year the situation will deteriorate even further.
Most families have failed to prepare for farming because there are no seeds to plant.
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Monday, 12 November 2007
Zimbabwean dies queuing for visa |
A Zimbabwean job-seeker who collapsed and died in Cape Town last week, is said to have succumbed to starvation.
Adonis Musati, 23, was a police officer in Chimanimani in eastern Zimbabwe, but the economic crisis led him to South Africa to try to support his family.
He had spent a month at the Home Affairs Refugee Centre, trying to get a work permit, reportedly with nothing to eat, sleeping in a cardboard box.
His family said they had learned of Adonis's death on the internet.
The BBC's Southern Africa correspondent Adam Mynott says Adonis Musati left Zimbabwe and crossed into South Africa more than a month ago.
Like tens of thousands of his countrymen he had hoped to find work, but was unable to get a permit.
On Friday 2 November, he collapsed on a traffic island near the offices of South Africa's home affairs refugee centre in Cape Town and was found dead.
Braam Hanekom of Passop, a refugee rights organisation, told our reporter that Adonis appeared to have died of hunger, having not eaten for four days.
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But fellow Zimbabweans who met him outside the refugee centre told the South African news website IOL that he had not eaten for two weeks.
"It is a disgrace that someone should die of hunger in one of South Africa's richest cities," said Mr Hanekom.
He said there are 25,000 Zimbabweans like Adonis Musati in Cape Town looking for work and food.
Up to 3m Zimbabweans have arrived in South Africa to escape the economic crisis in their own country.
Family members living in Sasolburg in the Free State, are now in Cape Town to identify his body and to make funeral arrangements.
His cousin Ivy Dhliwayo said the family had not heard of Mr Musati's death from the Zimbabwean consulate, nor from the South African government.
"(His twin brother) Adbell read a story on the internet, and that is how the whole family found out," she said.
Passop says it is funding the relatives' expenses and will try to get Musati's body back home for burial.
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14 April 2007 | issue 2046
Zimbabwe: from liberation to dictatorship
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Leo Zeilig
The struggle against white rule in Zimbabwe in the 1970s galvanised a generation in the hope of a new Africa.
Now the country has become a byword for repression.
Tracing the death of a dream
On 18 April 1980 the Union Jack was pulled down, the Zimbabwean flag raised and Bob Marley and the Wailers played live to thousands.
Zimbabwe was independent.
The victory over the Rhodesian regime of Ian Smith was celebrated around the world.
Prime minister Robert Mugabe was the incarnation of the struggle that had bought Zimbabwe’s freedom.
Zimbabwe emerged out of the authoritarian and racist state established by the British a century previously.
In 1890 the territory was marked out and handed to the imperialist adventurer Cecil Rhodes, who controlled the area for his British South Africa Company.
The following 40 years witnessed the mass expropriation of land from peasant farmers, the repression of any resistance, and forced labour in mines and factories.
Thousands of Africans were forced off their land and herded into “communal lands”, or reservations.
In 1962 the Rhodesian Front, a right wing party headed by the racist
Ian Smith, won power. Smith declared independence from Britain in 1965, in what was called a Unilateral Declaration of Independence.
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The decision to declare independence was made in the context of the growth of resistance in Rhodesia and rising politicisation.
Smith ruled with an iron fist.
His government killed thousands of so-called terrorists and herded rural Zimbabweans into concentration camps to cut them off from the nationalist freedom fighters.
Robert Gabriel Mugabe was among a group of radical nationalists that formed the Zimbabwe African National Union (Zanu) in 1963.
He showed his personal commitment to the struggle — he spent the decade from 1964 in a variety of prison camps and jails.
By the end of 1978 the united nationalist armed forces were somewhere between 35,000 and 40,000 strong.
The government’s forces were engaged on approximately six fronts, with martial law imposed throughout the whole country.
In 1980 liberation had been won.
Mugabe was the radical voice of Zimbabwean freedom, promising before independence that “none of the white exploiters will be allowed to keep an acre of their land”.
He vowed to end the massive inequalities in Zimbabwean society where more than 80 percent of industrial production was controlled by foreign capital and only 4,000 mostly white farmers controlled 70 percent of the most fertile land.
In the early 1980s the new government increased spending on health and education. Enrolment increased in primary education from 1.2 million in 1980 to more than 2.2 million by 1989, and in secondary schools from only 74,000 to 671,000 in the same period.
Arthur Mutambara, now a leader of the MDC opposition, remembers how he worshipped Mugabe:
“He was my hero, I used to idolise him.
I was sold to the socialist agenda and Zanu was our party of revolution.”
But independence in Zimbabwe had been won on strict conditions.
The 1979 Lancaster House agreement that led directly to independence guaranteed that the property rights of the white majority would be safeguarded.
Mugabe left the farmers untouched.
They were now not the “colonialists” and “imperialists” but rather useful allies to the regime.
The compromises, delays and ultimately the failure to confront the issue of redistribution were representative of Mugabe’s general approach.
He preached reconciliation with his old enemies:
“If yesterday I fought you as an enemy, today you have become a friend.
If yesterday you hated me, today you cannot avoid the love that binds you to me and me to you.”
As one person observed, “Despite its Marxist-Leninist rhetoric the Zanu-PF government tried to preserve the largely white-owned productive structures.”
The old structures of state repression remained intact.
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Zanu massacred black opponents in Matabeleland, in the south of the country.
It has been estimated that between 1981 and 1988 between 10,000 and 20,000 “dissidents”’ were killed.
The main trade union federation, the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), was packed with Mugabe’s friends.
However, by the mid-1980s the economy had begun to stagnate.
From 1986 per capita GDP declined rapidly.
Loans from the World Bank were accepted by the government, causing foreign debt to rise from £400 million in 1980 to £1.5 billion in 1990.
The government introduced the first full Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP) in 1991.
Following similar — and similarly disastrous — programmes in most of Africa, the World Bank and the IMF insisted on the removal of import controls, changes to what was regarded as “restrictive” labour legislation and widespread public sector reforms.
Strikes
The effects of these reforms were devastating.
The year after the implementation of the ESAP saw an 11 percent fall in GDP.
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In 1993 unemployment reached a record 1.3 million from a total population of about 10 million.
New militancy was born out of the attacks.
The old leadership of the ZCTU was replaced by a new one. In 1988 Morgan Tsvangirai — a mine worker and activist — became general secretary of the ZCTU.
In 1996 Zimbabwean society exploded.
In August there was the first national government workers’ strike.
Tens of thousands came out on strike against job losses, bad working conditions and government corruption.
As the strike continued it developed clearly political aims.
An elected committee of rank and file trade unionists directed the strike.
Flying pickets moved from workplace to workplace arguing with workers to join the movement.
The following year saw more demonstrations and strikes than at any time since independence.
As Tendai Beti, a leading activist at the time, remembers, “You could smell working class power in the air.”
University students, informal traders and workers recently made redundant joined the struggle.
Brian Kagoro, a student leader in 1997, recalls:
“You now had students supporting their parents on their grants, because their parents had been laid off work.
As poverty increased you had a convergence of these forces.”
Former fighters from the guerrilla war against the Rhodesian state became galvanised by the mass upheavals.
These war veterans denounced Mugabe.
The ZCTU repeatedly sought to lead and direct the mass movement.
Rank and file activists, often organising in labour forums — where large groups of workers met to discuss politics — rushed ahead of union bureaucrats in organising strikes and demonstrations.
From 1998 a recurrent theme of the labour forums was the demand for the ZCTU to form a workers’ party.
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Finally in September 1999 the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) was born, and Morgan Tsvangirai became the movement’s first leader.
The MDC was formed directly out of the ZCTU, promising redistribution of wealth to the poor.
The mood in the country was jubilant.
The party almost won the parliamentary election in 2000, winning 57 of 120 elected seats.
The fact that it came close to toppling such a violent regime after having only existed for 16 months is an indication of the extent of the changes that were sweeping Zimbabwean society.
The MDC retained a working class base, but various NGOs, academics, businessmen and lawyers had added their voices to the calls for a new opposition.
So the demands for a new party carried a contradiction.
On the one hand they came from the labour forums and the streets, who wanted an end to privatisation, anti-union laws and the power of big business.
But on the other hand pressure was mounted by the middle class and some sections of business who were threatened by the movement they now sought to co-opt.
Mugabe was attacked by the masses, but he had also angered the global powers.
The IMF and World Bank shunned the regime, arguing it had caved in too easily to “sectional interests”.
Mugabe realised that the regime had to move quickly, and government rhetoric began to lambast “Western racism”.
Land was key to this reorientation.
The government sanctioned the occupation by war veterans of white-owned farms.
Before long Mugabe had outmanoeuvred the opposition in his party and won most of the regime behind his new “left wing” stance.
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He remarketed himself as a leader of the fight against imperialism and globalisation.
But his partial withdrawal from structural adjustment was a cynical move forced on him by popular resistance and working class struggles.
The reality for most Zimbabweans has been a continuation of the same policies while the regime mouths platitudes about “foreign powers”.
Privatisation continues and the cost of fuel and food rises, while land is redistributed mainly to a coterie of Mugabe’s cronies.
Over the past three years Gideon Gono, the Reserve Bank governor, has rolled out an unforgiving programme of neoliberal reforms that have slashed subsidies to the poor, while resuming debt repayments to the International Monetary Fund.
Mugabe has given the governor his full support.
Millions face a daily struggle to survive, as unemployment has reached 80 percent.
Morgan Tsvangirai has repeatedly threatened to remove Mugabe by extra-parliamentary activity if he refuses to go legally.
But the path to this action has been blocked by a combination of repression and economic crisis.
The regime has unleashed a wave of terror, which has helped to paralyse the MDC.
Militants
Madzewo Chimuka, general secretary of Zimbabwe’s Graphical Workers Union (ZGWU), explains:
“Though we organised two national strikes in 2004, the environment was incredibly difficult.
We had about 50 workers who were severely beaten by police.”?
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The MDC remains the repository of hope for the majority of Zimbabweans, who see the party as the only way of ridding the country of Mugabe.
Behind the party is the support of a generation of working class militants, who formed the movement in 1999 and stand firmly with it.
Canwell Muchadya, president of the ZGWU, expresses the difficulties for the opposition today.
He said:
“There is no rule of law and no jobs in Zimbabwe, so for the opposition to say to workers, ‘Come, let’s fight’ is very difficult because people will respond, ‘I will be beaten by the police and lose my job’.”?
Real improvements for Zimbabwe’s workers and peasants will not come from the authoritarian neoliberalism of Mugabe.
Nor will they come from the policies of George Bush and Tony Blair, those false friends of freedom who claim to want democracy in Zimbabwe.
Mugabe can be removed by a coup in his own party, by pressure from the West, or by a movement from below.
The fight is to achieve that final option, where workers and peasants mobilise and shape the fall of Mugabe in a way that benefits the majority rather than the imperialist world order.
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Demolition of homes |
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South Africa weapons maker Armscor responsible for brutality.
South African activist Hassan Lorgat hotly responded to one question.
Dreadlocks bounced as Zimbabweans in the audience nodded vigorously when Lorgat accused South African weapons maker Armscor of being part of the war against Zimbabwe's citizens.
Arnold Tsunga, of Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, then tactfully took over to put the case more convincingly.
After they had taken part in the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1998, he explained, Zimbabwe's helicopters and jet fighters could not fly any more — the European Union's arms embargo saw to that.
But then Armscor came to the rescue by supplying parts and maintenance, Tsunga added.
Now the repaired helicopters and planes were being used to intimidate the population.
He said Armscor had helped Zimbabwe to circumvent the EU embargo, which in itself helped to persuade Zimbabweans that they had no chance against Mugabe's government.
There was also no resistance because soldiers and police did the burning down while riot-helmeted colleagues, heavily armed with Armscor-maintained weapons, kept cover.
"No human being deserves to be treated in this degrading manner, especially by their own government," Tsunga said.
The video footage made several telling points: not all the structures being targeted were illegal — many ruins had electrical pipes sticking out from all angles, and entire markets installed by the government itself were demolished.
Several buildings, like the Hatcliffe Aids orphan shelter, had been well-functioning facilities, supported by the government.
A wide-eyed nun said the demolition of Hatcliffe township had been the most traumatic experience of her life.
An elderly woman was shown sitting among bowls and appliances in her unwalled kitchen, refusing to move.
"They put in a polling station here before the election, so why are they now burning down everything?" asked one puzzled and angry victim.
Jean du Plessis, of an international housing NGO, said Mugabe's campaign could be construed as a crime against humanity and that his organisation would pursue the possibility of charges against Mugabe.
Hans Pienaar Star 24/6/05 |
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The United Nations is estimating that 700,000 people have been left without homes or their livelihood following the government's effort to destroy slum areas.
The UN estimates another 2.4 million people have been affected by the campaign.
The report called the program a "disastrous venture" that was being carried out "with indifference to human suffering." |
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Saturday, 8 April 2006
Zimbabweans have 'shortest lives'
Zimbabweans have the shortest life expectancy in the world, with neither men nor women likely to live until the age of 40, according to a UN report.
Zimbabwe's women have an average life expectancy of 34 years and men on average do not live past 37, it said.
The World Health Organisation report said women's life expectancy had fallen by two years in the last 12 months.
Correspondents say poverty because of the crumbling economy and deaths from Aids are responsible for the decline.
Zimbabwean women have the lowest life expectancy of women anywhere in the world, according to the report.
Women in the country are also more likely than men to be infected by the HIV virus.
'Economic meltdown'
According to the report, all 10 countries with the world's lowest life expectancy were in Africa.
People in Swaziland and Sierra Leone are also expected to die before they reach the age of 40, the report said.
Japan was said to have the highest life expectancy in the world, with people there living on average until 82.
According to the BBC's Africa editor, David Bamford, the latest figures are extraordinary for a country like Zimbabwe, which until 20 years ago, had a relatively high standard of living for Africa.
The HIV/Aids epidemic sweeping across southern Africa cannot alone be blamed for this - especially as recent figures show a slight drop in HIV infection rates in Zimbabwe.
Our correspondent says the key reason behind the drop in Zimbabwe's average life expectancy is the fall in the standard of living, triggered by an economic crisis.
Zimbabwe's economy has shrunk by an estimated 40% in the last seven years under President Robert Mugabe.
(Names of the girls have been changed to protect their identity.)
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Thursday, 8 December 2005
Zimbabwe in meltdown — UN envoy
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Zimbabwe is in "meltdown" says United Nations humanitarian chief Jan Egeland following a visit to the country.
He also said President Robert Mugabe's rejection of tents for hundreds of thousands of people evicted and made homeless this year is "puzzling".
Some 700,000 people lost their jobs or homes in a government demolition programme, an earlier UN report says.
"This disastrous eviction campaign was the worst possible thing, at the worst possible time," Mr Egeland said.
The government disputes the 700,000 UN figure and says it carried out slum clearances to reduce crime and overcrowding.
"The situation is very serious in Zimbabwe when life expectancy goes from more than 60 years to just over 30 years in a 15-year span — it's a meltdown, it's not just a crisis, it's a meltdown," Mr Egeland told the BBC in Johannesburg, immediately after his four-day trip to Zimbabwe.
He pointed to "the Aids pandemic, the food insecurity, the total collapse in social services".
Tents
Mr Egeland, the UN under secretary for humanitarian affairs, said donors had an obligation to help despite disagreements with the government — of which the offer of tents was the most notable.
"If they [tents] are good enough for people in Europe and the United States who have lost their houses, why are they not good enough for Zimbabwe?" he said.
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Mr Mugabe's spokesman said Zimbabweans were "not tent people" and they wanted the UN to build permanent homes.
Mr Egeland said the government's rationale for the eviction campaign was deeply flawed.
"The eviction campaign seems to me wholly irrational in all of its aspects — you lowered the standard of living rather than increasing it."
'Extremely serious'
Mr Mugabe last week agreed to let the UN provide food aid to some three million people over the next year.
"The humanitarian situation in Zimbabwe is extremely serious and it is deteriorating," Mr Egeland said.
After "frank" talks with Mr Mugabe on Tuesday, Mr Egeland said they had agreed that the international community should do more to meet humanitarian needs in Zimbabwe.
"Our message to the government was to help us, to help you, to help your people."
And when asked why donors should fund the $276m being requested to save lives in Zimbabwe, Mr Egeland said "it is in no way punishing the government, to not help women and children in great need".
Mr Egeland spent Monday meeting people living in camps and said some of them were living in inadequate conditions — much worse than before.
When questioned on whether UN staff on the ground were negligent by failing to help Zimbabweans by seeking to avoid confrontation, he said he had raised the issue of criminal behaviour with Mr Mugabe.
"It's a criminal act to bulldoze someone's home who owned their land — there should be prosecutions."
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Thursday, 9 June, 2005
Zimbabwe's new homeless
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A Catholic priest, who did not want to be identified, described the scenes of devastation in the capital, Harare, to the BBC News website:
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Friday, 22 July, 2005
UN condemns Zimbabwe slum blitz
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A major UN report has called for an immediate end to Zimbabwe's slum clearance programme, declaring it to be in violation of international law.
Hundreds of thousands of homes in the country's shanty towns have been torched and bulldozed in recent months.
Zimbabwe says the demolitions aim to clean up urban areas and ensure building regulations are followed.
But the UN report, to be released in full later on Friday, says the policy is disastrous and inhumane.
The BBC's Susannah Price at UN headquarters in New York says the UK and US are likely to use the hard-hitting document to renew their calls for the UN to take immediate action.
To date, the Security Council has refused to call a meeting on the clearances.
Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe usually rejects any criticism, as coming from racists, or their stooges, opposed to his nationalist stance but correspondents say this will be more difficult with this report.
It was compiled by Kofi Annan's special envoy Anna Tibaijuka, a respected international diplomat from Tanzania, a country with close political links to Zimbabwe.
'Indifference'
The report calls for an immediate halt to the slum clearances which it says have affected a total of two million people.
"While purporting to target illegal dwellings and structures [the operation] was carried out in an indiscriminate and unjustified manner, with indifference to human suffering," it says, according to an excerpt cited by the Associated Press news agency.
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Zimbabwe says the policy — known as Operation Murambatsvina [Drive Out Rubbish] — is intended to crack down on black-market trading and other criminal activity in the slum areas.
But the report says, whatever the motive, the result is ill-conceived and inhumane.
Hundreds of thousands have been forced to seek shelter elsewhere as their homes are destroyed.
The opposition says the evictions are meant to punish urban residents, who have rejected President Robert Mugabe in favour of the opposition in recent elections.
The report has already been presented to Zimbabwe's government and will be presented to all UN members on Friday.
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Wednesday, 13 July, 2005
Church outrage at Zimbabwe raids
South African church leaders have accused Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe of "trampling on humanity" with the recent destruction of houses.
A South African church delegation has just completed a visit to Zimbabwe to see the consequences of raids on shack dwellers and informal traders.
Shack demolitions over the past two months have left more than 200,000 people homeless, according to the UN.
The government says the crackdown is aimed at ridding cities of criminals.
The police have this week started demolitions in more affluent parts of the capital, Harare.
Eddie Make, deputy secretary general of the South African Council of Churches (SACC) said a visit to the Caledonia transit camp near Harare, to which people have been relocated, had caused the delegation "a lot of pain".
"People had literally been removed from their places of abode and dumped in a remote area with no cover other than plastic sheets and pieces of wood they had cut from surrounding trees in order to protect them from the winter cold," he told the BBC's Network Africa programme.
Mr Make said the delegation appreciated that governments have a responsibility for law and order.
"But we are of the opinion that this is not creating order," he said. "Rather, it is disrupting the lives of people."
Political solution
"We would like to say to President Mugabe that he is trampling on the humanity of people and as we believe all people, regardless of whether they are poor or engaged in illegal activities, are created in the image of God it is therefore incumbent upon the political authorities to respect their human dignity."
Mr Make said that as a church organisation, SACC would pray for those responsible for the actions.
"Secondly we would like to encourage churches in South Africa and around the world to write letters of support to the people of Zimbabwe," he said.
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He added his organisation would campaign for aid and relief to Zimbabwe, because "it is quite apparent that this kind of assistance is not being offered by the Zimbabwean government, and it is an open secret that when aid is made available to the country it is being used for political purposes".
Mr Make also said SACC would "be facilitating a political solution for the people of Zimbabwe through talking to the president of South Africa".
Anglican Archbishop Njonkulu Ndungane and Catholic Cardinal Wilfred Napier were also part of the interdenominational church delegation.
New South African Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka has also visited Zimbabwe.
After meeting Mr Mugabe, she said her country was working to understand the challenges facing Zimbabwe.
Meanwhile, a motion condemning the demolitions has been rejected by Zimbabwe's parliament.
It was proposed by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change but lost the vote 54-33. |
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Friday, 1 July, 2005
More deaths in Zimbabwe's blitz
Three more people have died in Zimbabwe's controversial urban slum demolition scheme, says rights group Amnesty International.
UN envoy Anna Tibaijuka visited the site where two women — one pregnant — and a boy were reportedly killed.
She told homeless residents they should keep calm, reports Reuters news agency.
In a separate move, the World Food Programme (WFP) said Zimbabwe's current food shortages made it one of the most worrying countries in the world.
The month-long demolition programme is so far thought to have left 275,000 people homeless. At least three other children have been crushed to death during the operation.
Thousands of the displaced people are now living on the streets, while others have gone back to rural areas, and some have moved into unaffected parts of the cities.
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UN move
United Nations chief Kofi Annan sent his envoy to Zimbabwe amid the continuing demolitions, which have been strongly criticised by the US and Britain.
The demolition site witnessed by Ms Tibaijuka was at Porta Farm, in the suburbs of the capital, Harare.
Residents told her how bulldozers destroyed their homes on Wednesday and Thursday.
"[A young boy] panicked when he saw police destroying houses and tried to run away. He didn't see the oncoming police truck which killed him," Jane Petter told her, AFP reports.
Amnesty International's Kolawole Olaniyan said: "Over the last 48 hours, Porta Farm, a shanty town of at least 10,000 people, has been obliterated."
President Robert Mugabe has defended the demolitions, arguing that they are rooting out criminals involved in black market trading, and are part of a programme to regenerate cities.
Humanitarian crisis
The UN Security Council, in a discussion on Africa's food crisis, criticised the demolitions.
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Britain's ambassador to the UN, Emyr Jones-Parry, said the government was to blame for many of the problems facing Zimbabwe.
"It is man-made and not a natural phenomenon. The economic collapse in Zimbabwe is the result of bad policies and bad governance," he said.
Acting US ambassador Anne Patterson said America was deeply concerned about the demolition scheme and urged the government to begin a dialogue with the opposition to help reverse the economy's continuing decline.
WFP head James Morris told the Security Council that more than four million people needed emergency food aid in Zimbabwe.
On a recent visit there, he had told Mr Mugabe that the WFP would help with food distribution, but only if it was allowed to operate freely without government interference.
He said he was told the government wanted to feed its own people.
South Africa hits back
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Meanwhile South African has hit back at accusations that it has been silent about Zimbabwe's problems.
"President Thabo Mbeki has been very clear on this — he went to Zimbabwe twice, and in the presence of President Mugabe expressed his displeasure about things that were going on in Zimbabwe," South African presidential spokesman Bheki Khumalo told the BBC.
"The notion that we have not spoken out is not true.
"As Africans we must do as much as possible to encourage dialogue between [Mr Mugabe's] Zanu-PF and the [opposition] MDC," he added.
On the issue of the recent housing evictions, Mr Khumalo said South Africa would wait for the UN special envoy's findings. |
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Friday, 10 June, 2005
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Most businesses are open as normal in the Zimbabwe capital, Harare, on the second day of a strike in protest at the demolition of illegal homes.
Correspondents say the strike was poorly organised and was difficult to publicise in a country where the state controls most media outlets.
On Thursday, President Robert Mugabe defended the crackdown, which the UN says has made 200,000 people homeless.
He said the three-week blitz was needed "to restore sanity" to cities.
As part of the strike, opposition MPs boycotted Mr Mugabe's speech as parliament was officially opened following after elections in March.
Rumour
Traffic in Harare is somewhat lighter than usual. There has been a heavy police presence in poor neighbourhoods during the strike, which was called by an alliance of opposition parties, trade unions and lobby groups.
The main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, announced its backing for the strike only one day before it was due to state.
Many Zimbabweans thought the strike was only a rumour, as it was not reported by state-controlled radio, TV or daily newspapers.
Some workers who still have formal jobs were either afraid of police retaliation or unwilling to lose two days' pay.
Police have warned they will deal "ruthlessly" with any street protests.
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During the three-week crackdown against illegal homes and trading, bulldozers have razed shantytowns and markets in Harare and other cities, and armed police have made some residents knock down their own houses.
A Catholic priest told the BBC News website that many people were living rough, surrounded by a few possessions, despite the cold winter nights.
'New apartheid'
The government says the house demolitions are necessary to clean up Zimbabwe's urban areas, and that the crackdown on traders is targeting those involved in illegally trading foreign currency and scarce foodstuffs, such as sugar.
"The current chaotic state of affairs where small- to medium-scale enterprises operated outside the regulatory framework and in undesignated and crime-ridden areas could not be countenanced much longer," Mr Mugabe said.
Some 30,000 people have been arrested.
Church groups and opposition parties, which are critical of the government action, combined to form the "Broad Alliance" and call the strike.
They say the crackdown is aimed at driving opposition supporters back to rural areas, where they have less influence.
The UN has demanded that Mr Mugabe stop the eviction operation, which it describes as a new form of "apartheid".
The UN Human Rights Commission estimates that up to 200,000 people may have been made homeless by the operation.
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Satellite image of Porta Farm, Zimbabwe, 22 June 2002 |
Satellite image of Porta Farm, Zimbabwe, 6 April 2006 |
© Copyright Amnesty International |
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Wednesday, 30 August 2006
No help for Zimbabwe's homeless By Peter Biles
Southern Africa correspondent, BBC News
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One victim quoted by the report accuses the authorities of leaving people to live like animals in the open air: "If government had done this and then said 'go stay over there', it would have been better, instead of destroying everything and leaving us like animals."
"It's like when you pull down a cattle kraal (pen), first you build another one. You put the cattle in the new kraal and then you destroy the old one."
Archbishop Ncube told the BBC that the government had failed to live up to its promises:
"They themselves said that they would construct 300,000 houses. They've constructed a few hundred houses and none of them have been occupied."
Traders hit
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Operation Murambatsvina began with an assault on informal traders.
A year later, the informal sector - which accounts for 80% of the economy - is said to be in disarray.
Vendors and their families are sliding into even greater poverty, and legal trading sites need to be rebuilt urgently.
Although people in Zimbabwe's cities were forcibly moved and often dumped by the police in the countryside last year, 75% of those families are now reported to be back in the urban areas.
"In some houses, people now co-exist in around one square metre per person of floor space," the report says.
"Married couples are forced to sleep apart, unmarried adults are forced to share space, and single people live continually on the move, from one tiny house to another. "Children are exposed to sex-for-money activities, and face schooling difficulties from overcrowding and poverty."
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For archive purposes, this article is being stored on TheWE.cc website.The purpose is to advance understandings of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. |
There are many sickpeople inside, they can'twalk and relatives don'thave money to send themto hospital
Mbare resident Majorie
Egeland interview
Open areas are full of people living rough.
