Back to Index

Police in Bulawayo launch fresh blitz against vendors
ZimOnline
April 19, 2006

http://www.zimonline.co.za/headdetail.asp?ID=11972

BULAWAYO – Police in Bulawayo have launched a fresh blitz against street vendors and foreign currency dealers in a campaign which residents say is reminiscent of last year’s controversial clean-up exercise.

Residents in Zimbabwe’s second biggest city of Bulawayo, told ZimOnline yesterday that the police had intensified the campaign against vendors and the homeless with over a hundred people being arrested last weekend alone.

The residents said the police were being aided in the operation by Bulawayo municipal police.

Bulawayo executive mayor, Japhet Ndabeni-Ncube, confirmed the participation of municipal police in the exercise saying the police had requested assistance from his municipal police to rid the city of "criminal elements".

"We provided the manpower after the police approached us to help them round up the illegal traders in a bid to reduce crime in the city," Ndabeni Ncube said.

The police could not be reached for comment on the matter last night.

But vendors who spoke to ZimOnline said they were arrested at the weekend and were only released from Bulawayo central police station after they had paid admission of guilt fines.

"The majority of vendors and homeless people have been arrested in the city and those who were lucky were made to pay admission of guilt fines while some are still detained at the central police station," said a vendor who had just been released.

Some vendors said they had been assaulted by the police despite having valid business licences from the city council to carry out their activities.

The latest crackdown by the police comes almost a year after the Harare authorities carried out a similar exercise which displaced about 700 000 people and directly affected another 2.4 million people, according to a report by the United Nations.

The UN envoy who compiled the report, Anna Tibaijuka, criticised the home demolition exercise by President Robert Mugabe’s government as a gross violation of the rights of the poor.

But Mugabe rejected the criticism insisting the clean-up exercise was necessary to rid cities and towns of squalor. - ZimOnline

Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.

TOP