Where are the Africans to speak for Zimbabwe?

Where are the Africans to speak for Zimbabwe?

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By Nobuhle Nyathi

WHAT is happening in Zimbabwe and why is it different? The Zimbabwean government began its “Operation Murambatsvina” (Operation Drive Out Filth) by arresting vendors all over the country.

By the end of the week beginning 25 May, they had arrested 20, 000 vendors and seized their wares. They proceeded to destroy some of the council designated places that vendors were operating from. This in a country where there is 75% formal unemployment. The informal sector kept Zimbabweans alive. Through it we were able to pay rent, pay school fees for our children and buy food.

This operation then moved into people’s dwellings, here I am not talking about just plastic and metal structures at Hatcliff Extension, Killarney, Joshua Nkomo and Ngozi Mine settlements, I am talking about cottages in every street in what we know as the high density suburbs, all these were razed down. The only time we as Zimbabweans have known anything of this kind was during the war of liberation when the cruel Smith regime forced people to relocate to “protected villages”, but even that madness pales into significance when compared with what is happening in Zimbabwe today.

When this operation started without any notice whatsoever, churches and other humanitarian organisations that wanted to assist people who had been left suddenly homeless in the middle of winter without any food were stopped from assisting the affected. Government argued that these people should go to their rural homes; government said that assisting these people would encourage them to stay in cities. This is what the people’s government of Zimbabwe said. In Harare those who were “lucky” were taken to a transit camp, Caledonia Farm. Suddenly we had a strange situation in which people who were living in brick cottages with electricity and clean water were reduced to sweating it out in plastic shacks. The rest were told to go to the rural areas. There isn’t much food there we are in need of food aid. We do not even have mealie-meal in the shops, yet our President was on television not so long ago telling the world that “We do not need the food, why foist it down our throats. Give it to those countries that need it.”

"The tragedy is that fellow Africans who should speak on our behalf are engaged in massive hand wringing"

NOBUHLE NYATHI

The impression was given by government that it was only getting rid of illegal structures and arresting people involved in legality yet the fact of the matter is that in many cities vendors are licensed by their local councils and they operate according to law in vending sites designated by councils. As an example I will cite Unity Village and Fort Street Market in Bulawayo. There is also the Kwame Nkrumah Avenue Flea Market in Harare, all these and numerous other were officially opened by Mugabe’s ministers and were hailed as efficient and successful employment projects. There are hundreds of such places in our cities yet all these have been closed because according to government, criminal activities are taking place there. Why not arrest the criminal and leave the place operating for the benefit of others? The idea that the best way to deal with a criminal is to destroy where he/she stays is as unworkable as it is impractical. If this were the way to catch criminals, we would not have State House today for we would have long reduced it to rubble.

Many informal settlements had been given tacit approval by the government. Hatcliff Extension, which went up in smoke in May, was now accepted and recognised as a legal settlement by Parliament. World Bank was even funding its water network.

In the early 1990s when city councils were insisting that they would destroy backyard cottages and structures that the people had put in their homes without council permission, government intervened and said the councils should let the structures be. It was against this background that these cottages and structures mushroomed in people’s homes. For government to turn back on the people today and say that these structures are now illegal and go on to destroy them is callousness writ large.

In fact if the idea behind the clean-up is to rid the country of criminals let us look for those who bombed us in the camps of Nyadzonya and Chimoi. Let us look for those who killed 20 000 people in Midlands and Matabeleland during the Gukurahundi. Let us look for those who benefited from Willowvale, those who abused funds from the War Victims and Compensation Fund. You do not create employment by destroying the informal sector. Razing down people’s houses will not bring forex to Zimbabwe.

Make no mistake; Zanu PF is no longer a progressive liberation movement. It has become a repressive party that is out of its depth in this modern world. Its intellectually-challenged functionaries are utterly clueless on how to manage a modern economy. Survival in the party depends on saying: “We are behind the president”. The huffing and puffing that Mugabe engages in every time he speaks about sovereignty is meant to tell the world that: “We have the right to oppress our people, after all we liberated them”.

The tragedy is that fellow Africans who should speak on our behalf are engaged in massive hand wringing. We have now been left in a tragicomic position where dubious institutions like the World Bank now speak on our behalf and tell Mugabe to stop the demolition of people’s houses. Imperial powers like Britain and USA now carry the torch of our freedom and dignity. This is just not on and it stinks to high heaven. We would like it more if Mbeki spoke for us, we would like it more if Benjamin Mkapa spoke for us, we would like it more if Zimbabwe Broadcast Holdings, South African Broadcasting Corporation, Kenyan Broadcasting Corporation told our story. But they are not interested. Instead it is left to Blair, Bush, BBC, CNN to tell our story.

Africans keep silent. Through their silence they urge Mugabe on and give the misleading impression that there is wisdom in encouraging Mugabe’s brutality so as to spite the West.

What is the rage and lunacy that leads respected people to act as Mugabe’s cheer leaders while he unleashes Armageddon on a defenceless population?
Nobuhle Nyathi is a regular contributor to our guest column and writes from Bulawayo, Zimbabwe
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