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Submission to the UN Special Envoy investigating the recent actions perpetrated against the citizens of Zimbabwe by the mugabe regime
Combined Harare Residents Association (CHRA)
June 30, 2005

Introduction
The Combined Harare Residents Association is an organisation of neighbourhood residents associations and residents. We have a long history of struggling for democratic, accountable and transparent local government in the capital and in Zimbabwe. Our efforts in 2001 which lead to a democratically-elected Council and Mayor in 2002 were subverted by the mugabe regime which undermined that Council and eventually replaced it with a Commission which now administers Harare with no mandate from its residents and in clear contravention of the law. CHRA filed an urgent application with the High Court challenging the imposition of the Commission but 3 weeks later, this application has still not been heard.

While it is clear that central government is behind the current actions, legally it is the Municipality that is the regulatory authority for the various laws and by-laws under which the regime has attempted to justify its actions. The central government has usurped the powers of the local authority and has become the de facto municipal government. The right of citizens to elect local government representatives has been trampled upon. They have no recourse to their local authority or to the law.

Operation Murambatsvina
On May 24, the City of Harare published a general notice instructing all residents to remove illegal structures and giving a deadline of 20 June to comply. This piece of bureaucratic fiction was exposed immediately as the bulldozers began destroying structures: there was obviously no intention of observing the notice period or respecting the rights of owners.

The track record of the mugabe regime for the provision of social housing since independence is not encouraging. Most of the expansion of such housing in the city was planned before 1980 and implemented with donor funding that became available in the eighties and nineties. In 1981 $300 billion (in 2004 money) was expended on public sector housing in the country; in 2003, this had dropped to 1,6 billion. In 1997 9 000 units were constructed at the peak of the Urban II Project (which was funded by the World Bank and USAID).

Claims that the clearances targeted plastic and scrap metal shacks are disingenuous and fly in the face of clear evidence that the majority of the so-called illegal structures were substantive dwellings either constructed from brick-and-mortar or prefabricated wooden sheds. When the destruction is quantified, we will have some idea of the loss inflicted upon citizens but we must remember that these houses were built through the efforts of hundreds of thousands of ordinary people and represented, in many cases, the crowning achievement of the lives of many many people.

The idea that Zimbabweans are better off living in the open, alongside roads, in holding camps or in pole-and-dagga huts in the rural areas is laughable. Not even this regime would pretend that. If then, as it claims, the regime was motivated by a desire to improve the circumstances of the urban poor, it would have embarked upon a house building programme that put new housing in place before the demolitions occurred. If, as they now claim, the regime will build adequate numbers of housing in the next two months, then why did they not embark on such a massive programme prior to the destruction?

The regime has a long history of forced removals and trampling upon the most basic rights of our citizens. It has made many broken promises to those affected. Any promises it is now making can only be viewed with the deepest suspicion.

Operation Restore Order
The informal sector in Zimbabwe is a direct consequence of government policies and its economic mismanagement. It has always been a feature of Zimbabwean society and fulfils a vital role both in supporting the marginalized poor and in the supply of good and services. The sector expanded rapidly with the introduction of structural adjustment programme in the early nineties but even more so after the destruction of commercial farming, the influx of displaced farm workers into the cities and the destruction of the formal economy.

• Vending and informal trading was encouraged by the zanu-pf council under the corrupt Solomon Tawengwa administration (1996-99)
• The vendors were mostly licensed by the Municipality and as such had a right to protection under the law.
• Existing laws should have been used to deal with unlawful activities.
• The attacks did not discriminate between law-abiding and law-breaking vendors.

Social problems should be dealt with through well-thought out programmes not by arbitrary measures.

The Law
Existing urban by-laws provides a legal framework in which any illegal activities can be controlled. Criminal laws can also be applied. The activities of the regime amount to collective punishment against both the innocent and lawbreakers alike.

The Harare Municipality published a notice in the Herald on 24 May giving residents one month’s notice, yet no effort was made to follow due process and destruction proceeded without any legal basis.

The City of Harare is administered by a government-appointed Commission that replaced a democratically-elected Council. According to the Urban Councils Act and legal precedent set by the Supreme Court in 2002, the Commission is clearly illegal: any actions by the Commission are unlawful. In the absence of lawful local government, the mugabe regime has suspended our constitutional rights to elected representation. This illegality supersedes any that may exist at a lesser level.

Financials
The regime claims it will spend 3 trillion dollars on the re-building exercise.

• This money has not been budgeted
• Current domestic debt is $10 trillion
• The 2005 budget is $27,5 trillion against revenues of $23 trillion. The budget deficit is anticipated to be as much as 15% of GDP
• Government has already provided $2,8 trillion in its Productive Sector Facility
• It has also borrowed $200 billion for its Parastatal and Local Authorities Re-orientation Programme
• It needs as much as $5 trillion for food imports this year
• It will result in an accelerated inflation rate.

Practicalities

• The cost of building a 2-room core house excluding services is certainly more than $100 million
• $3 000 000 000 000 = 30 000 houses

Given that hundreds of thousands of citizens have been made homeless, 30 000 houses do not begin to address the demand. At any rate it is patently obvious that the regime does not have the capacity to build anywhere this number of houses. At the peak of investment in public sector housing (1981) government spent some $300 billion (in 2004 money); in 2003, this had dropped to 1,6 billion

Lies
THE ongoing clean-up operation dubbed "Operation Murambatsvina" has created hundreds of temporary jobs in Harare as unemployed Harare youths from the high-density areas have organised themselves into demolition gangs hired to pull down illegal structures for a fee. "Demolitions create jobs" The Sunday Mail 26 June 2005

Let us create employment by knocking down parliament or digging up the railway to Bulawayo – this is not employment except in the most obtuse sense.

Long term costs
When Zimbabwe returns to the rule of law, statutory authorities will be open to litigation and substantial claims for damages. This will place a huge burden on state finances at national and local level. It is the Zimbabwean citizen and ratepayer who will be left with the bill for the regime’s actions.

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