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No reason to celebrate for Murambatsvina victims
Mavis Makuni, The Financial Gazette (Zimbabwe)
October 05, 2006

http://allafrica.com/stories/200610050758.html

THE marking of World Habitat Day on Monday should have been a momentous occasion in Zimbabwe.

After all, it was the first time the United Nations-designated date of October 2 had come around after the government's much-heralded Operation Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle had been in force for a full year.

When World Habitat Day was commemorated last year, the housing programme had just been launched and it was too early to expect results, although government rhetoric had suggested 450 000 housing units would have been completed by August last year in Harare alone. The reality of course, was a different matter altogether. However, after a full year of implementation, Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle should have brought smiles to the faces of many formerly homeless Zimbabweans on the occasion of this year's observance of the day.

Alas, World Habitat Day was an anti-climax in Zimbabwe with no sign whatsoever that an unprecedented government initiative designed to deliver decent housing to the people had been underway for over a year. Local Government, Public Works and Urban Development Minister, Ignatius Chombo delivered the main speech to mark the day at Hatcliffe in Harare on Monday. Instead of being an occasion for the minister to present keys to gleaming new Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle houses to proud owners, Chombo spoke against a backdrop of tottering, plastic shacks stretching as far as the eye could see. Keys were presented to a few beneficiaries who are to occupy houses built by cooperatives.

The nervous occupants of the plastic shacks swaying in the mud after some scattered showers in the capital spoke to a television reporter of their anxiety about the onset of the rainy season which could wash away their flimsy tents. Others said they were not sure whether to believe Chombo's assurances that there would be no more upheavals since he never visited them when their original dwellings were demolished under Operation Murambatsvina last year. They said they were hesitant to invest scarce resources into building new structures when there was no guarantee that they would not be caught up in another demolition spree.

The upshot was that instead of being an occasion to celebrate the delivery of shelter under the much-touted Operation Garikai/Hlalani initiative, the gathering turned out to be a gripe session which the residents used to highlight how officialdom had forgotten about them despite fulsome promises made when their dwellings were razed to the ground. The residents complained about the lack of basic infrastructure such as ablution facilities and water reticulation. There are no schools, clinics, no roads and no shops. Pupils expressed despondency about the prospect of studying for final examinations in such squalid and harsh conditions.

Deplorably, throughout his official speech, Chombo did not say a single word to indicate that the government was still committed to reconstructing the dwellings it razed to the ground during last year's two-month long demolition orgy by the army and the police. Instead, his rhetoric had a menacing and impatient ring, suggesting that the government is fully determined to shift the responsibility for dealing with the ramifications of its widely condemned clean-up exercise on to others. He called on the private sector and individual householders to ensure the completion of the programme. What is the government itself doing?

When Operation Murambatsvina sparked an international outcry last year, government officials defended the inexplicably rushed and lopsided initiative aggressively and sanctimoniously. They labelled those who questioned the wisdom of demolishing existing abodes before alternative shelter was assured racists who did not believe that blacks were entitled to live in nice houses. The government alleged that its detractors, led by the British and Americans, had ganged up in a bid to stop it from providing decent accommodation for its people. Who can soon forget the torrent of denunciation UN Habitat executive director, Anna Tibaijuka was subjected to after her visit to Zimbabwe to assess the humanitarian impact of the clean-up exercise? The Tanzanian-born technocrat, who had been dispatched as UN boss, Kofi Annan's special envoy, was crucified and accused of being an agent of Tony Blair and George Bush after she had compiled a scathing report on Murambatsvina.

Tibaijuka's fearless declaration that Murambatsvina "was indiscriminate and unjustified and conducted with indifference to human suffering, illegal under domestic and international law and had caused a humanitarian crisis of unprecedented proportions" is now being borne out by the government's failure to deliver. Instead of the hundreds of thousands of houses the government boasted it would build under Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle, it seems there are more plastic shacks than even before judging by those at Hatcliffe.

The government has had a full year of throwing political tantrums about the nobility of its intentions in dreaming up Operation Murambatsvina/Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle. It has done everything to block discussion of its actions by the United Nations Security Council, the African Union and the Southern Africa Development Community. Foreign Minister, Simbarashe Mumbengegwi has publicly gloated about Zimbabwe's successes in forestalling being placed on the agenda of any of these organisations.

The bottom line is however that after all the political gimmicks and subterfuge which have convinced the government that it is infallible and invincible, the people it is supposed to be serving are still suffering and exposed to the elements. Is it not time as the rainy season looms, for the government for once to put the needs of the people ahead of political expediency? All the government needs to do with respect to the housing crisis spawned by Murambatsvina is to swallow its pride and revisit offers of assistance made by the United Nations. Continued intransigence will only prolong the suffering of the people throughout the country for whom the government has failed to cater under the over-rated Operation Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle.

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