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Operation Murambatsvina - Countrywide evictions of urban poor - Index of articles
Children
of the streets feel wrath of Mugabe
David Blair,
The Telegraph, UK
May
16, 2006
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/05/16/
President
Robert Mugabe began a new onslaught on Zimbabwe's poor yesterday
when his regime announced that more than 10,000 street children
and vagrants had been "rounded up" in Harare.
Police
described their latest assault on the capital's poverty-stricken
street dwellers, codenamed Operation Round Up, as a crime-fighting
measure.
Last
year they bulldozed thousands of "illegal structures" in the poorest
townships, leaving 700,000 people without homes or livelihoods.
The
new operation appears aimed at those cast on to the streets by the
earlier demolitions.
A
total of 10,244 "vagrants, street kids, touts and other disorderly
elements" have been detained, according to The Herald, the country's
official daily newspaper.
Assistant
Commissioner Munyaradzi Musariri said they would be "relocated"
to their "homes" in rural areas. "As police, we will not rest until
there is sanity in the streets and the operation is continuing,"
he said.
He
said nothing about what would become of street children with no
rural homes to go to.
In
the past, Mr Mugabe's regime has swept people off the pavements,
forcibly loading them on to lorries, before dumping them in remote
areas with no support. Police officers routinely assault and rob
detainees.
Many
of those caught by the swoop will be victims of the spiralling economic
crisis. Inflation is at 1,043 per cent - the highest rate in the
world - and one third of the economy has been wiped out in the past
six years.
Harare
and the second city, Bulawayo, are the strongholds of Zimbabwe's
opposition and 82-year-old Mr Mugabe views urban dwellers with deep
suspicion.
Clearing
the townships and relocating their inhabitants to rural areas, where
the ruling Zanu-PF party is dominant, are central goals of his regime.
This
week marks the first anniversary of the onset of the township demolitions,
which the regime codenamed Operation Drive Out the Rubbish.
Mr
Mugabe publicly turned down an offer of tents from the United Nations,
thereby condemning countless families to sleeping in the open air.
Today
the victims of this purge are clustered on the fringes of townships
across Harare and every other city.
The
regime pledged to build new houses to replace those it had demolished.
But this promise has been broken and few new homes completed.
The
authorities kept no record of those who were left destitute by the
demolitions. There is therefore no way of identifying the right
people to be given new houses - even if enough were built.
Economic
collapse is rapidly impoverishing every strata of society, save
for the corrupt elite around Mr Mugabe. Critics say police operations
targeted on the urban poor make the crisis even worse.
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