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Operation Murambatsvina - Countrywide evictions of urban poor - Index of articles
Tackle
the monster of Zimbabwe, says Soyinka
The
Star
July 21, 2005
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=&click_id=79&art_id=vn20050721063232260C876920
Nigerian Nobel
laureate, writer and activist Wole Soyinka has called for sanctions
to be imposed on Zimbabwe.
Calling Robert
Mugabe a "monster", he said tougher action needed to be
taken against the Zimbabwean president.
Speaking at
the Cape Town Press Club on Wednesday, Soyinka said complicity among
African leaders in their apparent inability to take action against
members of the African Union who disregarded the organisation's
own protocols, or became "an embarrassment", should be
dealt with swiftly and decisively.
Soyinka, in
South Africa to deliver a talk in the Nelson Mandela birthday lecture
series organised by the Human Sciences Research Council, said Nepad
and other initiatives by African leaders were weakened when they
failed to act against "rogue leaders who are like rogue elephants
who run amok and trample their own leaders".
He said it was
an affront to those who had struggled and given their lives for
freedom in Africa when leaders became "worse than the colonials
they replaced in oppressing their people".
Soyinka, who
has campaigned vigorously for human rights, said oppression was
evil, no matter who carried it out: "I don't care about the
colour of the foot pressing on my neck - I just want to remove it."
He added that
he was opposed to loans being given to the Mugabe government by
South Africa, and that if any were made, they should be attached
to very stringent conditions.
Meanwhile a
newspaper was quoted as saying on Wednesday that residents of Harare
would have to pay hefty fines to save "illegal structures"
from demolition when a controversial government clean-up campaign
resumes later this month.
Residents of
the Zimbabwean capital's high-income suburbs would have to pay fines
equivalent to more than R13 400 to "regularise" buildings
on their properties built without permission from the city council,
the state-controlled Herald reported.
"The money
is like a fine to people who built illegal structures that were
not approved at their premises," a city council official told
the newspaper.
On Monday, residents
of Harare's wealthier suburbs were given 10 days to obtain approval
for structures on their properties after the government temporarily
halted Operation Restore Order, a controversial campaign that has
seen houses, shacks and backyard cottages destroyed in poorer suburbs
of Zimbabwe's towns and cities.
The programme,
which was launched two months ago, has received widespread condemnation.
Human rights
groups say at least 300 000 people have been made homeless by the
campaign, which the opposition Movement for Democratic Change says
is aimed at driving its urban supporters into rural areas dominated
by Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF party.
Meanwhile opposition
lawmaker Trudy Stevenson on Wednesday said that residents of the
low-income Harare suburb of Hatcliffe Extension, who had their houses
demolished at the height of Operation Restore Order, had been reallocated
plots of land in the same area by the government.
"How will
they transport all their furniture and belongings and families back
to Hatcliffe Extension?" the lawmaker for Harare North asked.
"And how
will they all find out about this, when some have been chased back
to their rural areas by the police?"
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