Zim promotes 'self-sustenance'

2005-06-23 10:54

Harare - Police in Zimbabwe have closed seven office buildings in central Harare as part of a controversial clean-up campaign, a newspaper reported on Thursday.

But the authorities have backtracked on a plan to ban vegetable gardens in cities.

Some tenants of the closed buildings were given just hours to get out, the state-run Herald reported.

"They gave us a 13:00 deadline to move our things out of the offices. I don't know how I am going to feed my family as this was my source of livelihood," an evicted tailor told the newspaper.

Police launched Operation Restore Order five weeks ago in what they said was a bid to spruce up the image of Zimbabwe's towns and cities.

The campaign has been condemned internationally. A United Nations (UN) envoy is expected in the country next week to assess the "humanitarian impact" of the exercise.

Government downplays threats

Meanwhile, the government has played down threats to ban urban farming, a key source of food for many poor city dwellers.

"Urban agriculture has not been banned. The government respects its contribution to the national food basket," Musavaya Reza, the provincial administrator for Harare was quoted as saying.

"The ban is not global. It only affects stream bank cultivation and the cultivation on undesignated areas," Reza said.

On Wednesday police announced they would destroy urban crops by spraying them with chemicals, and urged people to grow "flowers and lawns" instead, according to the Herald.

But Reza said the government would urge people to grow small crops and vegetable patches in spaces left by demolished buildings.

Increasing risks of food shortages

"We want to bring back that culture of self-sustenance," he said.

This week famine watchdog, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (Fewsnet) warned that Zimbabwe's urban population was increasingly at risk of food shortages.

Some human rights groups estimated up to one million people have been displaced in the recent clean-up campaign.

On Wednesday, justice minister Patrick Chinamasa told parliament people who have lost their homes in the police blitz would be relocated to their "original homes", which in Zimbabwe generally means rural areas.

He said Zimbabweans of foreign origin, who have nowhere to go, would be resettled on farms the government has seized from the country's former white land owners. - Sapa-dpa

- SAPA