Wednesday, June 22, 2005 Posted: 0142 GMT (0942 HKT)
HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) -- Zimbabwe police have extended a demolition
campaign targeting the homes and livelihoods of the urban poor to the
vegetable gardens they rely on for food, saying the crops planted on
vacant lots are damaging the environment.
President Robert Mugabe was quoted Tuesday as saying concern about the
campaign was misplaced and agreeing to allow in a United Nations
observer.
The crackdown on urban farming -- at a time of food shortages in
Zimbabwe -- is the latest escalation in the government's monthlong
Operation Murambatsvina, or Drive Out Trash, which has seen police
demolish the shacks of poor city dwellers, arrest street vendors and
smash their kiosks.
Mugabe defends the campaign as a cleanup drive. But the political
opposition, which has its base among the urban poor, says the campaign
is meant to punish its supporters.
The United Nations estimates the campaign has left at least 1.5 million
people homeless in the winter cold. Police say more than 30,000 have
also been arrested, most of them street vendors the government accuses
of sabotaging the failing economy by selling black market goods.
Senior Assistant Police Commissioner Edmore Veterai said Zimbabwean
authorities are now targeting urban farming, saying the practice was
causing "massive environmental damage," state radio reported Tuesday.
The destruction of city plots is a painful reminder of one of the most
hated policies of the white government that ruled before independence
in 1980 -- the random slashing of crops on roadsides and railroad
embankments.
The current crackdown comes when this southern African country needs to
import 1.2 million metric tons of food to avoid famine. Years of
drought, combined with the seizure of thousands of white-owned farms
for redistribution to black Zimbabweans, have decimated agricultural
production.
Many poor families depend on their vegetable patches for food and a
tiny income at a time of 144 percent inflation and 80 percent
unemployment.
Many of the capital's 2 million residents till any vacant ground they
can find for an annual production of 50,000 metric tons of corn -- over
a fifth of their total food requirements -- according to farming expert
Richard Winkfield.
The Rev. Oskar Wermter, former secretary to the Zimbabwe Roman Catholic
Bishop's conference and a parish priest in one of the poorest downtown
areas, called the crackdown against these plots "insane and evil."
"They are sleeping in the open air -- tiny children and people dying of
AIDS -- and people you thought still had some decency are defending
this crime against humanity," said Wermter. "It is a watershed, it is
the beginning of the end, but the end will be terrible."
Charlie Hewat, executive director of Environment Africa, said
controlled urban agriculture was essential for the poor throughout the
developing world's cities. There were, however, no legal allotments in
Harare, Zimbabwe's capital.
The main opposition Movement for Democratic Change has accused the
81-year-old Mugabe of imitating Cambodia's former Pol Pot regime by
driving pro-MDC urban voters back to rural areas for "re-education."
It alleges food access is being used as a weapon of political reprisal
following March 31 parliamentary elections won by Mugabe's Zimbabwe
African National Union-Patriotic Front.
Mugabe expressed surprise at the "misplaced hue and cry over Operation
Murambatsvina" in a recent telephone conversation with U.N.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan, presidential spokesman George Charamba
told The Herald newspaper.
Mugabe agreed in the phone call to let Anna Tibaijuka, Tanzanian head
of the United Nations Habitat agency, come as Annan's envoy to asses
the impact of "Operation Murambatsvina," Charamba confirmed.
On Sunday, police spokesman Whisper Bondayi said the demolition
campaign was being extended to wealthier suburbs. He said some
residents had illegally converted their homes into offices and
workshops.
No demolitions have been reported in such neighborhoods. Wealthy home
owners have recourse to judges and lawyers, unlike the poor who rush to
salvage what possessions they can before their homes are burned or
bulldozed.
Police have also arrested 335 prostitutes and 161 illegal immigrants --
mostly "fugitives from justice in their own countries" -- in raids on
lodges and apartments near downtown Harare, Bondayi told Tuesday's
edition of The Herald.