|
Zim extends 'clean-up' campaign
18/06/2005 17:31 - (SA)
Harare - The Zimbabwean government has started targeting rural areas in a sweeping blitz on crime and shanties that has already left tens of thousands homeless and destitute in the country's major towns.
"Now that we have covered all urban areas including small towns, the operation is going to replicate itself in rural areas," police spokesperson Wayne Bvudzijena said on Saturday.
"The issue is we want to stop illegal activities so that people follow the law in the way they conduct their business."
"The operation will continue until we are satisfied it has achieved it's objectives. We will soon be revisiting all the areas that we have already covered to ensure people are complying."
Bands of armed police have gone on the rampage over the past month in major towns across Zimbabwe, demolishing and torching backyard shacks and makeshift shop stalls in a campaign that has drawn widespread international condemnation.
The operation has so far left between 200 000 and 1.5 million people homeless, according to the United Nations and the opposition respectively.
'Lacks planning and foresight'
The double-barrelled crackdown, code-named Operation Murambatsvina (Get rid of trash) and referred to as "tsunami" among urban dwellers, has spawned a new class of destitute families living and sleeping in the open in several townships and slums on the outskirts of Harare.
Some families have relocated to their rural homes while some who could not find transport because of fuel shortages, resorted to burning their property in frustration.
The crackdown has extended to rural areas and the police have thus far destroyed backyard shacks and vending stalls in Guruve, in northwestern Zimbabwe, Shurugwi in the central Midlands province and a rural service centre in eastern Manicaland province.
"This whole exercise lacks planning and foresight," Alouis Chaumba, director of the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace said.
"Now that that it's extending to rural areas, nobody is spared and we wonder at the wisdom of such an exercise that leaves people homeless in this winter period.
"We are not opposed to a genuine clean-up campaign but we are against the inhuman and violent manner of this campaign."
Zimbabwe's former information minister Jonathan Moyo, a former protege of President Robert Mugabe who in the past vociferously defended the ageing leader's policies, denounced the operation as "barbaric" at a public debate on Thursday in Harare.
Mugabe, who has led the country since independence from Britain in 1980, has said the campaign is aimed at improving people's lives and creating "better infrastructure".
|
News
Zimbabwe Special Report
