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Another cold winter for clean up victims
Caiphas Chimhete, The Standard (Zimbabwe)
May 14, 2006

http://www.thestandard.co.zw/viewinfo.cfm?linkid=11&id=805

EXACTLY a year after the internationally condemned "Operation Murambatsvina" thousands of people who were left homeless by the exercise face yet another cold winter after government failed to provide them with alternative accommodation.

A drive around Harare by The Standard news crew showed that "Operation Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle" – a damage-control project initiated by government following the unplanned demolitions of houses – amounts to a mockery for victims of the clean-up exercise.

At some of the demolished sites, the victims have erected one metre high structures, which, for the past year have been their homes.

The structures, constructed from broken farm bricks – remnants of the operation – without mortar to bind them together, have gaping holes letting in draughts of cold air and rodents at night.

Every morning, children and their fathers crawl out of their shacks to go to school and work respectively. They have resigned themselves to this situation.

John Matemba, who has made such a structure from remnants of his house at Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo Heights in Kambuzuma, summed up the plight of "Murambatsvina" victims.

Pointing to Kambuzuma high-density suburb, which is less than 100 metres from the demolished settlement, Matemba said: "It’s like we're living in hell while people across the road are in heaven. It’s cold here."

At Hopley Farm Settlement, where the government dumped 1 600 families affected by the operation, hundreds of people - some with infants - are still sleeping in tents or on dusty floors.

A recent draft report by an international humanitarian organisation that provides free treatment to people in need fell just short of condemning the settlement as inhabitable.

The report said: "Hopley families have low resources, are living in crowded conditions and in many cases in makeshift shelters with plastic sheeting, thereby increasing their vulnerability to health problems such as scabies and pneumonia."

The snail’s pace at which the houses at Hopley Farm Settlement are being constructed irks the victims.

Official records show that only 209 houses have been roofed while 56 are at roof level and some of the incomplete structures have already been occupied.

An elderly man, who identified himself as Sekuru Solomon, said he feared that children could die from cold during this winter.
Weather experts predict this season will be one of the coldest in many years.

Sekuru Solomon told The Standard: "I have neither a bed nor a warm blanket. I sleep on the floor with my children. I fear they (children) will contract diseases."

The slow construction pace at Hopley mirrors that at Hatcliffe Extension and Whitecliff Farm, where government plans to resettle hundreds of families affected by the operation.

So far, only an estimated 500 houses have been completed at Whitecliff out of the 9 000 available stands. Other houses are at various stages of construction.

At this rate, it could take nearly two decades before all the intended beneficiaries secure decent shelter.

Murambatsvina victims in Harare are part of nearly one million families displaced by the operation countrywide, according to UN special envoy Anna Tibaijuka.

The Minister of Local Government, Public Works and Urban Development, Ignatious Chombo, claims the government has built 7 000 houses during the past year under the reconstruction programme.

Chombo could not be reached for comment. However, the situation on the ground does not support his claims.

This week, civic organisations, human rights defenders and journalists will tour settlements affected by the operation in Harare.

Hopefully, they will be able tell the international community that one year after, the victims of the government-sponsored operation are still out in the cold and desperately in need of assistance.

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