The Zimbabwe government is planning fresh home demolitions, just a little over a year after a similar campaign to destroy shantytowns and city backyard cottages left at least 700 000 people without shelter or means of livelihood. The government in May last year and weeks after controversially winning a key general election, ordered the police and army to demolish thousands of backyard cottages, shantytowns and informal business kiosks,
| Chombo confirmed the government was planning new home demolitions but said these would be on a much smaller scale than Murambatsvina. He said: “It is not Murambatsvina. But the spirit of Murambatsvina should not die. To ensure that we don’t reverse the gains of Murambatsvina we will do regular follow-ups. We cannot just watch while chaos prevails and people build wherever they want.” |
In addition to those left homeless, another 2.4 million people were indirectly affected by the military-style demolition exercise to bring the total number of victims to about three million or a quarter of ZimbabweÂ’s 12 million people.
Authoritative sources told our sources that Local Government Minister Ignatius Chombo, who oversaw last yearÂ’s widely-condemned demolition exercise, had set up a task force comprising officials from his department and the police to lay out the groundwork for a new offensive against slum dwellers and informal traders.
“There is some kind of a brigade that is being set up within the police specifically for that mission (to carry out demolitions),” said a senior official in the Ministry of Local Government, who did not want to be named because he did not have clearance from Chombo to speak to the Press.
“New illegal structures have come up since Operation Murambatsvina (the official codename for last year’s clean-up campaign. We will target these structures that have sprouted up and others that somehow survived the first Murambatsvina,” said the official.
Chombo confirmed the government was planning new home demolitions but said these would be on a much smaller scale than Murambatsvina.
He said: “It is not Murambatsvina. But the spirit of Murambatsvina should not die. To ensure that we don’t reverse the gains of Murambatsvina we will do regular follow-ups. We cannot just watch while chaos prevails and people build wherever they want.”