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Harare commission's hare-brained idea
Kumbirai Mafunda,The Financial Gazette (Zimbabwe)
January 19, 2006

http://www.fingaz.co.zw/story.aspx?stid=550

CLUTCHING an overladen satchel from which a worn-out blanket protrudes, a creased cardboard box and plastic sheeting, Zvisinei Matsapa wonders around with her portable "bedroom suite".

Close to her vegetable produce lie a grimy bottle and a battered plate. The heavens have just opened up at City Sports Centre grounds, less than a kilometre from central Harare, and Matsapa is soaking in the summer rains pounding the city as a consequence of the resolution by the commission supposed to be running the affairs of the city to relocate trading from the popular Mbare Musika.

Matsapa and her counterparts have to brave the elements, quietly cursing about the lack of official foresight that has brought about her current predicament. Just selling her produce in January, when consumer spending is traditionally at a nadir, is challenging enough.

Matsapa’s plight — shared by hundreds of other fresh produce traders from all corners of the country — brings back memories of the shelter crisis spawned by the government blitz on people’s homes in 2005. The vendors’ tear-jerking predicament has been triggered by the abrupt closure of Mbare Musika as the authorities try to combat the spread of cholera, which has claimed several lives in the capital in recent weeks.

Vendors and farmers from Murehwa, Honde Valley and Uzumba-Maramba Pfungwe, among other places, have been angered by the precipitous action and are evidently not impressed by the promised relocation to a built-up location in the strategic suburb of Mbare.

They protest at the unsanitary conditions they have to put up with at the "new market." In less than two weeks, the open space has turned into a mud bath and closely resembles the conditions at Mbare Musika prior to its closure. Set in the pristine environs of the up-market Belvedere suburb, the site sticks out like a sore thumb.

"It’s difficult operating from this place," says Matsapa, a mother of three, who has endured a 450-kilometre journey from Honde Valley in Manicaland province. "Mbare was central and we didn’t incur these added costs of hiring a pushcart from Mbare to this place," she adds.

Apart from meeting the additional costs, which are a drain on their tight purses, the subsistence farmers report a sharp contraction in business.

"There are few customers here as compared to Mbare," protests Dadirai Zuze, also of Honde Valley. "Plus the pushcart operators are charging exorbitant charges to ferry our produce."

Pushcart operators charge $500 000 for a single trip from Mbare to the city centre. Matsapa says she forked out $2 million for the transportation of her pockets of onions. She reveals that on a profitable trading day at Mbare, she used to make up to $15 million a day but has pocketed a paltry $2 million per day since the relocation.

"The sales are just depressing and yet we still have to pay school fees for our children and buy inputs for our next crop," says Matsapa.

A visit to the soggy grounds just after lunchtime shows that most farmers have given up selling their produce to shelter from a heavy downpour under trees, parked lorries and even the roof of the sports facility.

Although some Harare residents can see the sense in the city’s decision to sanitise Mbare Musika and curb the spread of diseases, human rights activists and political commentators accuse the authorities of once again acting with indifference towards vulnerable groups.

They argue that the city council does not appear to have learnt anything from the chaotic manner in which Operation Murambatsvina, which it actively supported, was executed.

"Murambatsvina is not over," says Tendai Biti, the secretary for economic affairs in the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). "Where you have a government concerned with moving people in and out of market places it shows it is bankrupt and moribund," Biti adds.

Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) director Arnold Tsunga charges that the government, which is backing council’s clean-up of Mbare, is sowing the seeds of another humanitarian crisis in the capital.

"The transfer of the problem from Mbare to the City Sports Centre can hardly be seen as effective planning," says Tsunga, whose rights group has assisted hundreds of Operation Murambatsvina victims with free legal advice.

"We have a state which continues to create fertile ground for a humanitarian catastrophe to arise because of a systemic failure in governance," he said.

Though government ministers and the city fathers reason that the relocation is necessary to cleanse one of Harare’s oldest suburbs, critics argue that the knee-jerk reaction can hardly be considered effective planning.

"This is no more than the forced movement of communities against their will and in violation of international standards and norms," Tsunga says.

‘Exposing disadvantaged communities to unhygienic conditions can only be attributed to poor macroeconomic planning by the City of Harare and the government," he adds.

Tsunga says the government appears to have exploited the cholera outbreak to move traders without attracting adverse criticism as it did with regard to Operation Murambatsvina, which has drawn censure from the United Nations.

"The citing of unhygienic conditions can be a justifiable pretext for the state not to comply with minimum human rights standards and the rule of law," explains Tsunga.

Since United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan’s special envoy Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka reported in her audit of Operation Murambatsvina that the government caused serious suffering of large sections of its population and should hold to account those responsible for the injury caused by the clean-up exercise, who will the farmers and vendors sue for lost business this time?

The vendors concur that since the controversial appointment of the Sekesai Makwavarara-led commission to run the affairs of the council the once alluring capital city has collapsed and believe, like Professor Milton Friedman, that the commission should have been left to wither on the vine upon the expiry of its first term of office.

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