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What has gone wrong with Zimbabwe's independence?
ZimOnline
April 18, 2006

http://www.zimonline.co.za/headdetail.asp?ID=11969

HARARE - As Zimbabwe today celebrates its 18 April independence from Britain 26 years ago, 64-year old James Mutape, in his shack along Harare's Mukuvisi river, must be wondering how the wheel has - so to speak - come full circle.

Looking much older than his years, Mutape told a ZimOnline team that visited the Mukuvisi last week to check on hundreds of families squatting there after the government demolished their homes last year, that this year will be the first time he will commemorate the coming of freedom in 1980 as a squatter.

"I have been a squatter before," said Mutape. "But that was during the liberation war when we had to flee to Mutare city after Ian Smith (Zimbabwe's former white ruler)'s soldiers burnt down our village as punishment for supporting freedom fighters.

"I never imagined a black government could destroy my home and leave me a squatter again!"

From Mutape's shack - made out of broken pieces of asbestos, metal and black plastic sheeting - one has an "ample view" of the human excreta, broken bottles, empty beer cans and other rubbish strewn all over and straying right into the dirty waters of the Mukuvisi.

There are no toilets or clean water here and Mutape says his wife and their two daughters have all to sleep in the single shack that serves as their kitchen and living room as well.

But Mutape and his fellow squatters along the Mukuvisi are not the only ones grieving in Zimbabwe as the glorious dream of independence has become a terrible nightmare after six years of a severe political and economic crisis.

Take for example the case of Joseph Chamunorwa. He was a relatively successful small-scale farmer in Chikomba district, in the heart of President Robert Mugabe's ruling ZANU PF party's stronghold of Mashonaland East province.

Things fell apart for Chamunorwa in August 2000 after mobs of ZANU PF militants burnt down his homestead after they had discovered that he had joined the opposition Movement for Democratic Change party formed in 1999.

"I fled to Harare in 2000 to start a new life," said Chamunorwa, who spoke to ZimOnline outside the Hopely holding camp, set up by the government just outside Harare to house families displaced by its controversial clean-up campaign.

He added: "Things were hard at first but I was making progress, I operated a flea market and the money I earned was enough to pay for accommodation in a backyard cottage in Mbare suburb …. then Operation Murambatsvina (clean-up exercise) came and here I am now, a refugee in my own country!"

Condemned by the United Nations (UN) and Western governments as a violation of human rights, the clean-up exercise left at least 700 000 people homeless and close to 2.4 million others were also indirectly affected by the home demolition campaign.

But the home demolition campaign that Harare says was necessary to smash crime and restore the beauty of the country's cities is only one in a series of questionable decisions and policies by Mugabe's government that Zimbabweans say have made life so unbearable that they see "no point in celebrating independence".

"We can hardly remember the gains of independence," said Harare human rights lawyer Archibald Gijima.

He added: "Virtually all the gains of independence have been or are in the process of being reversed by a vainglorious regime possessed with a longing to stay in power at whatever cost, even if it means killing and starving its own people. Truthfully and simply, independence celebrations are a non-event."

Once a regional breadbasket, Zimbabwe now survives on food handouts from international donors after Mugabe's controversial seizure of land from whites for redistribution to landless blacks destabilised the agricultural sector, knocking down food production by about 60 percent.

Fuel, electricity, essential medical drugs and just about every basic survival commodity is in critical short supply in the country, while inflation is heading for the 1 000 barrier after surging beyond 900 percent last month.

An estimated three million people or a quarter of the 12 million Zimbabweans have fled the mounting economic hardships and political violence to settle in most cases as menial labourers in neighbouring countries and overseas.

Gabriel Shumba, an exiled human rights lawyer who runs the Zimbabwe Exiles Forum in South Africa, says studies by his organisation show that more people have fled independent Zimbabwe than during colonial rule and the liberation war.

He said: "More Zimbabweans are deserting their country now than before independence. That is a shameful reality. It is difficult to fathom that this is happening in a liberated Zimbabwe that is supposed to be free and independent."

Outspoken Roman Catholic Archbishop Pius Ncube concurred with Shumba, adding that the church community had in recent years assumed the same role of sheltering victims of political violence that it used to perform during the 1970s liberation war.

"Churches are doing exactly the same things they were doing during colonialism; housing and caring for victims of political violence and intolerance perpetrated by a sitting government … so where is the independence?" said Ncube.

Or, if one may put words into Ncube's mouth, the question should rather be: what has gone wrong with independence? - ZimOnline

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