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A government fighting its own people!
Masimba Taonengwere Nyamanhindi
June 22, 2005

The recent announcement by the government that it was banning urban agriculture has confirmed to all reasonable minded persons that the government in Zimbabwe is on a deliberate and systematic warpath with its citizens. The recent ban, the latest step of government abuse of its citizens in the on-going 'Operation Murambatsvina, which is fast turning out to be 'Operation Murambavanhu' is clear testimony to the vindictive nature of the government which we have in this country. It clearly is a retributive exercise targeted at the urban poor, long considered to be enemies of the state, on the premise that they are not for the ruling party.

As the ongoing Operation continues, it has left behind a trail of destruction and relentless suffering for the people of this country. Most importantly, it becomes inevitable to point out that the people of Zimbabwe had increasingly turned informal due to the failure of the formal economy. Zimbabwe currently has an unemployment rate of over 80% and its economy has been shrinking over the last five years. Zimbabwe's population which is formally employed is reeling under the effects of uncharacteristically high inflation, spiralling costs of basic commodities, transport woes and persistent fuel problems - all directly linked to government's incompetence.

Urban agriculture, is becoming a means of livelihood diversification in the developing world, and is increasingly been seen as a means of alleviating urban poverty if properly planned. The Food Agricultural Organisation, (FAO) describes Urban Agriculture as practices within and around cities that compete for resources (land, water, energy and labour that could also serve other purposes to satisfy the requirements of the urban population. In essence Urban Agriculture has been necessitated by the expansion of the urban areas in Asia and Africa - slightly more than one-third of the populations of Asia and Africa are urban, according to a paper on Urban and Peri-urban Agriculture by the Food and Agricultural Organisation, (FAO).

As a result, as Africa and parts of Asia will become increasingly urbanised, urban poverty and food insecurity could worsen. To that effect, expansion of cities is driven by economic growth and/or by migration from rural to urban and peri-urban areas as agricultural and rural employment opportunities decline or lag behind population growth. Other factors that contribute to rapid urban expansion are: social unrest, natural disasters (drought) and lack of educational opportunities and medical facilities in rural areas. Zimbabwe today is a classic illustration of a failed nation, having embarked on a disastrous land redistribution process that is evidently failing to achieve desired goals. Zimbabwe has also over the years continued to experience persistent droughts, and the rural areas evidently lack social amenities and basic medical facilities - many hospitals and clinics in the rural areas now do not have any medication. Recently this publication revealed that in some parts of the rural areas, sick patients are being carried to clinics on ox-drawn carts. Evidently, this has resulted in massive rural urban migration and of course the occurrence of urban agriculture.

It therefore is callous for any government in a developing country to just wake up one day on the wrong side of the bed and declare that urban agriculture is wholly banned. Of course, the exercise has its own risks, which include environmental and health risks from inappropriate agricultural and acquacultural practices; increased competition for land, water, energy and labour and reduced environmental capacity for pollution absorption. But the disadvantages of such an exercise have to be weighed against the advantages of instituting clearly planned urban agriculture. The United Nations, through Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), clearly spells out that quantity of food available is increased through Urban Agriculture. Poor urban dwellers often lack the purchasing capacity to acquire adequate amounts of food. In Zimbabwe, food is not readily available, supermarket shelves are empty, and where the food is available, the prices are exorbitant.

Urban Agriculture reduces food insecurity by providing direct access to home-produced food to households and to the informal market. Much of the urban agriculture is for own consumption with occasional surpluses sold into the local market and has the advantage of creating potential agricultural jobs and incomes. In Urban Agriculture, there is less need for packaging, storage and transportation of food, non-market access to food for poor consumers, availability of fresh, perishable food and waste recycling and re-use possibilities. Yet Zimbabwe has taken a bold and ill-informed decision to put a halt to this practice, in the process directly affecting the poor and increasing the suffering of Zimbabweans. This is unacceptable!

Perhaps the most nauseating part of this intention is how it will affect women, and ultimately children. The whole saga - the Operation Clean-Up, has clearly disadvantaged women because they form a substantial part of the informal sector, including urban agriculture, and are involved in livelihood diversification. Studies done in developing countries have pointed out that women have increasingly turned to work in the informal sector. In Philippines, for example women control 79% of street enterprises; and in the 7% that are owned by couples, women are the major decision-makers. In Senegal, 53% of vendors are women; this is according to a research done by Dankleman and Davidson in 1988. Furthermore, a research paper on Urban Agriculture and Women's Socio-Economic Empowerment: A case study of Kiswa and Luwafu Area in Kampala City, Uganda show that Urban Agriculture is important to urban dwellers' livelihoods and specifically to women who dominate the informal sector. It shows that women dominate urban agriculture due to a number of socio-economic factors that include gender division of labour, low incomes, food security and a desire to earn personal income. In fact it has increased the socio-economic status of urban women as they become financially independent, more often than not providing for their children.

With the rate at which this operation is going, it is becoming evident that the operation is just but a human catastrophe that urgently requires the attention of the United Nations. When the rest of the world is making frantic efforts to try and map out ways of alleviating poverty that is becoming a permanent feature in its confines, especially in the developing world, Zimbabwe is making frantic efforts to try and impoverish its citizens through vindictive and ill thought out actions like this latest 'Tsunami'. Yet we are persuaded to conclude that the abuse of the Zimbabwean citizens by their own government is not merely an act of omission in itself, and does not occur by mere default, rather, the abuse is a direct result of deliberate human actions, which are all politically founded, in an unrestricted disregard for the disastrously negative and potentially irreversible repercussions on the welfare of the ordinary man.

*Masimba Taonengwere Nyamanhindi is a development communicator based in Harare. He can be contacted at nyams0@lycos.com

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