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This article participates on the following special index pages:
Operation Murambatsvina - Countrywide evictions of urban poor - Index of articles
Harare
blocks efforts to shelter homeless people: Amnesty
Nqobizitha Khumalo, ZimOnline
May 29, 2007
http://www.zimonline.co.za/Article.aspx?ArticleId=1446
BULAWAYO - Amnesty International
says the Zimbabwean government is continuing to hinder and frustrate
efforts to provide shelter to thousands of people who were left
homeless during a controversial clean-up campaign two years ago.
In a country report on
Zimbabwe that was released at the weekend, Amnesty expressed serious
concern at the plight of thousands of people who were left without
homes following the home demolition exercise.
At least 700 000 people
were left without shelter after President Robert Mugabe sanctioned
the demolition of their houses and backyard shacks in the military-style
clean-up campaign.
A United Nations report
compiled after the demolitions said another 2.6 million Zimbabweans
were also directly affected by the home demolitions that Mugabe
said were necessary to rid cities and towns of squalor.
"The situation
of thousands of people whose homes were destroyed as part of Operation
Murambatsvina (Restore Order) in 2005 continued to worsen, with
no effective solution planned by the authorities.
"The government
(has) continued to obstruct humanitarian efforts by the UN and by
local and international non-governmental organisations," says
the report.
The latest report is
set to renew pressure on Mugabe barely a week after another international
rights group said the veteran Zimbabwean leader could be dragged
to The Hague over the slum clearance campaign.
The Centre on Housing
Rights and Evictions (COHRE) last Wednesday said "the magnitude
of the crimes committed during Operation Murambatsvina deserved
an international response" and urged the UN's Security Council
to "bring the perpetrators of these crimes" to book.
Amnesty International
had no kind words for a housing programme, Operation Garikai/Hlalani
Kuhle that was launched in July 2005 by Mugabe to deflect international
criticism of his government's actions.
Amnesty said the housing
programme had failed dismally to provide houses for thousands of
displaced families.
"By May (2006),
one year after the programme's launch, only 3 325 houses had been
built, compared to 92 460 housing structures destroyed in Operation
Murambatsvina.
"Construction in
many areas appeared to have stopped. Many of the houses designated
as "built" were unfinished, without access to water or
sewerage facilities, and uninhabited," says the report.
The Zimbabwean government,
which is battling its worst economic recession, in late 2005 admitted
that it did not have the financial resources to finish building
the houses.
In an embarrassing turn
for the Harare authorities, the government urged all those who were
allocated the houses to finish building the houses on their own.
Mugabe turned down an
offer by aid agencies to provide temporary shelter to the homeless
saying Zimbabweans were not "tent people".
At a church-led commemoration
of Operation Murambatsvina in Zimbabwe's second city of Bulawayo
last weekend, victims of the clean-up exercise said they were still
sleeping in the open two years after the government promised to
allocate them new houses. -ZimOnline
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