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This article participates on the following special index pages:
Operation Murambatsvina - Countrywide evictions of urban poor - Index of articles
We
cannot live without truth
Oskar
Wermter SJ
Extracted from Mbare Report No 15
July 13, 2005
I could not
get into my own premises, such a throng of people jostling each
other were in front of the gate. People are hungry and desperate.
Where is the next meal coming from? The sick, the handicapped, the
elderly may get elbowed out of the way; the bedridden may be left
out altogether. Mbare has an unusually large elderly population.
Leaders of our parish neighbourhood groups come with lists of people
we have not been able to assist yet and tell harrowing stories of
biting hunger. How do we reach them all?
A few vendors are timidly emerging again on the streets with just
a few vegetables and fruits for sale, not more than they can grab
and run with if the police come round the corner. You get arrested
if caught vending.
Most people who were self-employed or depended on income from renting
out rooms are ruined. They have no chance ever to follow their trade
again unless they are party supporters and are given stands at the
new sites controlled by the party. People not supporting the party
no longer have a right
to life.
Not all who escaped the chaos in Mbare to the rural areas have been
lucky. A woman who has a history of being harassed as an opposition
party supporter, who had her house burnt and was beaten up, came
back from a remote area to look for food: there is nothing where
she went; she has been feeding her family on vegetables only.
There is no cleaning-up. There is only destruction and heaps of
rubble lining certain streets and filling up empty spaces where
people have dumped the debris left after -tsunami-. Mbare was never
so ugly.
That is the depressing thing: the enormous lies that are being told
day in, day out. The country is being cleaned up, order is restored;
you are freed from crime and corruption; new houses are being built.
Truth is constantly being twisted and distorted, which touches our
very humanity. We cannot live without truth. It is part of the air
we breathe. You choke on this diet of lies, you vomit when constantly
fed such poison.
The boys of Hartmann House loaded our car with blankets they had
brought from home for the displaced people. The students of St George's
reputed to be interested only in cricket or rugby, far from the
social reality of the country | raised $ 20 million with which we
bought three bales of blankets, 60 blankets each. It is very encouraging
to experience the solidarity of fellow Christians.
On Monday afternoon, while watching the crowds lining up for food
distribution, amidst the hustle and bustle of people shouting and
arguing, crying and pleading, suddenly Cardinal Napier, archbishop
of Durban, SA, appeared. I could not believe my eyes: what is he
doing here? Then more clergy emerged from a mini-bus: the delegation
of the SA Council of Churches was visiting Mbare. Tell your president|,
our aid workers told the visitors. Our president never received
them. It was good to experience the concern of our neighbours from
down south.
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