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The ongoing state's war on the poor
Zimbabwe Social Forum Youth Council
May 31, 2005

Cdes and friends;

For two weeks now, the state has been on a vicious offensive against the urban poor people in the so called 'operation murambatsvina' which is nothing short of a brutal, callous, tyrannical, Hitler like attack on the poor. The state has launched a nazi type blitzkrieg on informal traders, flea markets, tuck shops, and is demolishing and burning cabin/cottages that housed thousands if not millions of poor people, at the same time the police are destroying and looting informal traders' wares. Thousands of women and children from the affected ghettoes are sleeping in the open in this cold winter.

The most brutal fact is that what is under attack is the very source of people's livelihoods. Unemployment is currently at 80%, companies are closing down everyday and poor people have been sustaining their families through petty informal trading from which they never made much, but were at least getting a little something for rent, send their kids to school and feed their families. Flea markets, cross border trading, tuck shops, vegetables stalls, etc, this is how people have been living.

We all know of the critical housing shortage in towns, poor people are living in cabins; not by choice but because they have been condemned to that life of poverty and destitution by the very same regime which now attacks them. The police are burning and destroying these same cabins living thousands of people homeless. On the news there was a very sad picture of an old grandmother trying to save a few of her worldly belongings from a cabin she has lived in for the past ten years but now up in smoke. Even on the squatter camps the government saw the whole situation developing for years and it makes no sense to just lower the boom bar without warning. Without providing any alternative to affected families and living families total destitutes. Already over 15 000 poor people have been taken prisoners, vendors have lost their wares (which meant the world to them) which are being looted by police officers.

The most painful thing is that these attacks are coming at a time when people are facing unbearable hardships; serious transport shortages with workers walking to and from work and others sleeping on transport queues, basic food shortages and crippling water and electricity shortages in ghettoes. Gono must be named and shamed as the demon behind this whole madness, which has received Mugabe's total support. The monster Gono who is undoubtedly the biggest enemy of poor people in this country, intends to reconstruct a fully fledged neo-liberal order in this country by bleeding poor people to death and destroying the informal economy (the poor people' economy) at the same time opening up markets and creating a good environment for the so called legitimate businesses and the new Chinese colonizers.

We have already seen the poor people spontaneously rising up to resist these attacks with the burning barricades and pitched battles we saw in Glenview/Budiriro, Mbare, and Mabvuku. But if unorganized and supported this resistance will easily be crushed. Hence the call to this meeting. It is now time for all those committed to justice and life to gird themselves and join the fight. Hot boiling anger is already there on the ground but it needs to be channeled and directed into a coherent program of action. None of us can do everything but all of us can do something. The moment demands upon us that we rise up to defend life itself. We can no longer continue watching as our lives go up in smoke. We are under attack and its imperative upon us that we organize ourselves for self-defense. This mad operation can be stopped, and the calling is upon all the young people and all those able, to stand up and defend self, family and community.

On behalf of ZSF Youth Council;

Briggs Bomba
+263-23 295 722, +263-4-704209

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