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Zimbabwe Diaspora Coalition statement on Operation Murambasvina
Zimbabwe Diaspora Coalition
June 25, 2005

In response to the rapidly intensifying crisis at home we wish to make the following statement:

1. We recognize that the recent joint police and military operation conducted by Robert Mugabe and his Zanu PF regime against the urban poor of Zimbabwe under the code name Operation Murambatsvina constitutes a sinister new development in the attempt to destroy all support for the democratic opposition.

2. We associate ourselves fully with the courageous activism of the mass of ordinary Zimbabweans, who have struggled with honour and dignity to live lives of human worth according to universal norms of human decency in the face of relentless State repression.

3. We strongly support Archbishop Pius Ncube, a hero to millions of ordinary Zimbabweans, who has characterized Murambatsvina as a campaign of State terrorism which:

3.1 Emulates the genocidal social engineering policies of the Kampuchean despot Pol Pot;

and

3.2 Is intended to force urban dwellers into remote rural areas far beyond the attentions of international media, where they can be controlled by repressive rural government structures using physical violence as well as the manipulation of food aid.

4. We are deeply concerned that in order to achieve the aim of this Operation to coerce a large proportion of the population into a state of total and abject obedience to the regime, Zanu PF is prepared to condone the possibility of mass starvation.

5. In August 2002, Zanu PF organising secretary Didymus Mutasa stated, "We would be better off with only six million people, with our own people who support the liberation struggle. We don't want these extra people."

Mutasa is now the most powerful Minister in Mugabe's cabinet.

6. We utterly reject the ludicrous claim by the Zanu PF regime that this operation is merely a Court authorized attempt to enforce municipal planning guidelines.

7. We reject with utter disdain the refusal of the African Union to condemn this vicious onslaught upon the sovereign people of Zimbabwe using the excuse that the AU would consider any expression of concern as a violation of Zimbabwean sovereignty.

8. Specifically, we view with anger the inaction and timidity of the South African government and call upon Zimbabwe¹s powerful neighbour to take immediate steps through diplomatic sanction as well as economic embargo, to:

8.1 Bring Mugabe to the negotiating table; and

8.2 to bring about the holding of free fair and peaceful elections and respect for the universal principles of the Rule of Law to allow Zimbabweans to chart their own destiny.

9. We call upon the leaders who will attend the G8 summit to bring immediate and unanswerable pressure to bear on President Mbeki in order to achieve these objective.


10. The world¹s most powerful nations, to their eternal shame, have stood by and uttered platitudes in response to the deaths of millions in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the thousands of Darfur.

11. In the name of God and Man, we call upon the leaders of the G8, the most powerful interest group on Earth, to follow the demands of simple humanity and to coordinate immediate and effective action against Mugabe¹s regime before the most marginalized and contingent people on Earth, faceless people in remote parts of rural Zimbabwe, begin to die in their hundreds and then their thousands and then their hundreds of thousands

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