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This article participates on the following special index pages:
Operation Murambatsvina - Countrywide evictions of urban poor - Index of articles
'Police
blitz unlawful'
Susan Mateko, The Zimbabwe Independent
August 12, 2005
http://www.theindependent.co.zw/news/2005/August/Friday12/2953.html
THE conduct
of the police in executing Operation Murambatsvina in Bulawayo has
been declared unlawful by the High Court which ruled that the confiscation
and seizure of goods from vendors interfered with individual's property
rights.
Bulawayo judge
Justice Maphios Cheda ruled on August 2 that in destroying shacks
and seizing and confiscating goods, the police had acted outside
the confines of the law.
United Nations
Secretary-General Kofi Annan's special envoy on habitat, Anna Tibaijuka,
came to the same conclusion in her hard-hitting report on the operation
last month.
Justice Cheda
made the ruling in the urgent chamber application filed by Bulawayo
Upcoming Traders Association (Buta), a grouping of hawkers and vendors
who challenged the police's confiscating of their goods during the
clean-up.
Buta cited as
first, second and third respondents respectively the officer commanding
Bulawayo Province, the Commissioner of Police and the Bulawayo City
Council.
Said Justice
Cheda on the conduct of the police in destroying shacks and seizing
goods: "This conduct on the part of the police was unlawful. Police
are empowered to enforce the law but can only do so within the confines
of the law and not outside it. The indiscriminate and wanton destruction
as described by applicant and not denied by first and second respondents
cannot be allowed."
He said the
seizure of goods was unlawful.
"The seizure
and confiscating of traders' merchandise in the absence of a court
order is unlawful as this interferes with individual's property
rights," the judge said.
The judge also
took a swipe at the Bulawayo City Council for allowing the vendors
to sell their wares in the open. The court papers say the council
was collecting rentals from the traders but had failed to provide
appropriate shelter for them to conduct their business. The judge
said the shelters that the vendors were using, made of metal roads
and covered with canvas, were not proper.
"In my view
that is not the type of shelters any local authority properly applying
its mind would allow," said Justice Cheda. "In fact by allowing
this type of conduct on the part of the applicants, the third respondent
(council) was perpetrating an illegality."
The court called
on the Bulawayo city council to "re-visit its allocation programmes
of these vending bays bearing in mind the need to adhere to their
own by-laws and regulations in the city".
Robert Ndlovu
of James, Moyo, Majwabu & Associates who was representing Buta,
this week said the city council had agreed that the vendors could
return to their vending bays.
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