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Mugabe's rival evokes memories of demolition blitz
Agence France Presse
March 21, 2008

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gcgAvTDGXG5uFvHbcEF-qG_ahjHQ

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe's rival at the polls, Simba Makoni, evoked memories Friday of a widely condemned urban demolition blitz as he took his campaign to a well-known shantytown.

"Let us remember the suffering we endured in 2005 when they (Mugabe's government) felt the city was dirty and needed a clean-up," Makoni told a rally ahead of the March 29 elections.

"But when we all thought they would collect the garbage accumulating on the street corners, they held people at gun point, ordering them to demolish their own houses. Just imagine the severity of the cruelty.

"Zimbabwe does not deserve an oppressive government," he told supporters at the rally held under a tree on the side road of this semi-urban slum, some 15 kilometres (10 miles) southeast of the capital Harare.

Makoni, a former finance minister, is standing as an independent against veteran Mugabe, 84, who has ruled the former British colony since independence in 1980, and who is seeking a sixth mandate.

After the demolitions Harare promised to rehouse thousands of people, all who had been left homeless.

"And now where are the houses you were promised?" he asked.

Zimbabwean authorities launched Operation Murambatsvina (Drive Out Filth) in May 2005, calling it an attempt to rid the capital of crime and filth.

But a United Nations report afterwards said the mid-winter drive left 700,000 people -- the country's poorest -- homeless and destitute when shacks, houses, market stalls and shops were razed.

The operation, known locally as "the tsunami," also deprived at least a million people of their means of livelihood in an economically ravaged country grappling with six-digit inflation and over 80 percent unemployment.

Despite a much-vaunted follow-up operation called "Live Well", meant to rehouse those whose homes or shops were destroyed, tens of thousands are still living in makeshift homes at various locations across the country.

Only a small fraction of Zimbabweans have been given new houses.

"It was just as good as telling a person in tatters to take off his clothes promising to buy him new ones, but only in years to come. Where are the houses we were promised after Murambatsvina?" said Makoni.

Tendai Simbi, 35, an unemployed divorcee who survives on importing basic goods in short supply back home, lives with her parents in the shantytown after she lost her house during the 2005 clean up campaign.

A firewood vendor, Lydia Mbirimi, 53, is also squatting with her parents.

"Imagine that at my age, I am still a squatter," she told AFP.

New squatter settlements have sprouted in parts of the country worst affected by the demolitions campaign.

Makoni last month broke ranks with the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), a party whose symbol of a fist, he says, has "turned into a sledgehammer that has destroyed the country".

The leader of the main opposition Movement for Democractic Change (MDC), Morgan Morgan Tsvangirai, is also a presidential candidate in the election.

He charged on Thursday that the poll could be rigged in favour of Mugabe because of a separate vote counting system after the polls.

He threatened to pull out of the elections if the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) if presidential ballots were going to be counted at a separate venue.

He also told a news conference that independent investigations had revealed that 90,000 names appearing on the roll for 28 rural constituencies could not be accounted for.

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