Zimbabwe Operation Restore Order
By George Charamba
Zimbabwe’s clean-up operation, started in early June, has attracted harsh condemnation from Western capitals. The reporting in the Western media has scarcely acknowledged the government side of the story. We asked Zimbabwe’s secretary of information, George Charamba, to react. This is his response.
As before or more accurately as always, Zimbabwe has again grabbed the headlines, this time in respect of a clean-up operation dubbed “Operation Murambatsvina’ or “Operation Restore Order”, which has triggered an unprecedented focus on the country. The Kenyan-based UN’s “expert on the right to adequate housing”, one Miloon Kothari, described the operation as giving rise to “a new form of apartheid” in the cities, with the poor being discriminated against.
The analogy with apartheid suggested a dire humanitarian crisis with clear political provenance, and even impliedly begged for international intervention akin to the anti-apartheid movement of pre-independent South Africa. It also put President
Robert Mugabe, himself central to the anti-apartheid struggle, in the same league as Verwoed, the architect of apartheid. By all accounts, it was an unprecedented response, more so from the UN.
Expectedly, this signal opened a wide flank for the lynching of Mugabe and his government. And avid persecutors of Mugabe exist in industrial quantity. That in itself is not surprising given what Mugabe has done to upset the West. But the intensity of the response was extraordinary this time, maybe good notice to Mugabe of what it means for Blair to combine EU and G8 leadership.
With little hesitation, the new World Bank president, Paul Wolfowitz, himself a former high-ranking official of the US Administration, described the goings-on in Harare as “a tragedy” that is getting worse. He spoke from Johannesburg, at the conclusion of his tour of Africa which also took him to Nigeria, Burkina Faso and Rwanda. By any reckoning, the World Bank is far from a poor man’s bank or ally, which is what made Wolfowitz’s reaction unprecedented. Was he suggesting a new mores for the Bretton Woods institution, and if so, of what kind and meaning to independent-minded leaders like Mugabe?
Similarly, the Bush Administration, speaking through Adam Ereli, its State Department spokesperson, described the clean-up as a “tragedy, crime, horror”.
“It really is obscene what’s going on there, where the government destroys homes and businesses of Zimbabwe’s poor in some perverse, misguided move to respond to political opposition, or to respond to economic factors. It defies explanation”, added Ereli.
The reaction in effect accused the Zimbabwe government of a political pogrom aimed at all those who had voted for the opposition in the 31 March election whose outcome the US and the EU rejected.
Well before all this, Australia had shown the lead by announcing a new and tougher measure requiring any Zimbabwean transiting through – not visiting – Australian territory to produce a visa, a measure diplomatically meant to declare a whole people a collective persona non grata. So much of “targeted sanctions” for you. Expectedly, the trophy went to the British government. Prime Minister Blair condemned the action in a question and answer session in the House of Commons, but was careful that the Zimbabwe case would not prejudice his Africa programme in the G8, as suggested by Kate Hoey, herself no friend of Mugabe’s.
Blair’s foreign secretary, Jack Straw, was more scathing. Talking on the margins of a meeting on the reconstruction of war-torn Iraq – itself ironic – Straw asserted: “Bluntly, unless and until Africa’s leaders, as a whole, recognize what is going on and take action – not just to condemn it but to deal with it – we are likely to be in for many more months of this kind of tyranny, until President Mugabe moves aside.” He clearly suggested the clean-up was an expression and projection of tyranny.
Straw went further: “We have done everything we can to raise Zimbabwe’s international profile and raise the condemnation across the world, with some success”.
Would this reveal the real interest of the British government in the whole matter?
On 23 June, whether by sheer coincidence or causality, an unprecedented 150 human rights groups led by Amnesty International, International Bar Association, International Commission of Jurists, International Crisis Group, mounted simultaneous publicity stunts in New York, Lagos, Johannesburg, Cairo, Windhoek and in Harare itself. It takes quite some organizational capacity to put up such a show and the opposition MDC showed no such capacity in the run-up to the March election when it would have needed such focus.
Back in New York, the UN Secretary general Kofi Annan, came under tremendous pressure from the West to make a statement on the clean-up operation. Reportedly, he made contact with President Mugabe who expressed surprise that a simple clean-up operation and crackdown on crime – an occurrence he argued takes place all the time in many capitals of the world – would be an issue for the US secretary general.
But the pressure kept mounting on Annan who, only less than a month before was under similar pressure to upgrade the drought-induced food shortage situation in Zimbabwe to a Security Council issue. And the secretary general was in some kind of bind, made worse by the fact that his own officer had opened the way for the onslaught.
The pressure only relented when he undertook to send his executive director of the Kenyan-based UN Habitat to Harare as a special envoy.
Curiously none of the leaders or officials who pronounced themselves on Zimbabwe had paid a visit to the country. In the majority of cases, they relied on anecdotal media reports, or on assessments from people with clear political motives and reasons to exaggerate the situation.
No wonder the African Union rejected calls from the UK and the US to put pressure on Zimbabwe to stop the operation. An AU spokesman, Desmond Orjako, was quoted by the BBC as having said the organization “has many more serious problems to consider than Zimbabwe”.
“If the government that they elected says they are restoring order by their actions, I don’t think it would be proper for us to go interfering in their internal legislation,” Orjiako added.
Similar sentiments came from South Africa: Bheki Khumalo, the presidential spokesman was also quoted by the BB as having been “irritated” by calls from the British foreign minister, Jack Straw for South Africa to do more to end the “horrors” in Zimbabwe. “South Africa refuses to accept the notion that because suddenly we’re going to a G8 summit, we must be reminded that we must look good and appease the G8 leaders, Bheki said, “We will do things because we believe they are correct and right.”
Equally curiously, with the opposition the case for the urban displaced poor was made by MDC’s two white MPs, David Coltart, himself a former Rhodesian policeman, and Trudy Stevenson a white refugee from Amin’s Uganda and MP for Hatcliffe where an illegal settlement was demolished.
She likened the campaign to Cambodia under Pol Pot, claiming Zanu-PF was forcing MDC’s supporters to rural areas where they would be easier to neutralize. It sounded plausible and the US government appears to have bought it.
THE FACTS
But what really has happened in Zimbabwe to detonate such fury? In the clutter of propaganda, this is not an easy question to answer. What, however, is clear is that nearly a month ago, the Zimbabwe government started an operation dubbed Operation Murambatsvina or Restore Order meant to clean up the country of shacks and other informal structures put up outside the country’s laws and by-laws. “Murambatsvina” is a Shona verbal noun which etymologically speaking, breaks down to “muramba” which means “one who refuses” and “tsvina” which means “dirt”. Understood that way, “murambatsvina” simply means “the one who refuses dirt”. In every day usage, it is a derogatory reference to one too particular about his dressing and appearance, a flop of coxcomb. Murambatsvina” as an operation is then an exhortation to reject the cumulative dirt and chaos that comes with slums, shacks and informal markets and trading.
But the operation appended “Restore Order” to convey a rehabilitative goal which would follow the clean up exercise. Indeed, this is already happening through an inter-ministerial committee which the Zimbabwe government has formed for post-clean-up reconstruction.
Facts on the ground show that among the structures destroyed included those on settlements set up by war veterans at the height of land occupations between 2000 and 2005. Ironically many such settlements bore names of Zanu-PF heroes, including Joshua Nkomo Housing Scheme, named after the country’s late vice president, and largely accommodating families of veterans of the liberation struggle in the army, police, prison and civil service.
Except for Hatcliffe, most of the demolished settlements fell in Manyame and Harare South constituencies, both of which went to Zanu-PF in the March elections. These facts, it would seem, suggest a bona fide and politically blind clean-up campaign hardly following Zanu-PF’s political faultline.
Equally, far from the image of government bulldozers demolishing shacks and secondary structures, it turns out that once residents realized the government was serious, they were quick to own up and actually pulled down their own illegal structures and even carted away the rabble.
It was also telling that a two-day stay-away called by a broad alliance of opposition forces in early June when the clean-up operation was at its height, got no takers. Instead of confronting the government, those displaced simply queued to register with the authorities for alternative residential stands and sites, or simply repatriated themselves to rural areas to allow things to clear up before drifting back.
Indeed, many are drifting back, encouraged by the alternatives now in place. Some though stayed put by their destroyed shacks or illegal structures, less out of confrontation and more to put pressure on the authorities for these alternatives.
By 24 June, the authorities in Harare were already issuing residential stands, with names of the first 10,000 beneficiaries already published in the press. Players in the SMEs are already being accommodated, but only after a vetting process to weed out fake traders.
Also not acknowledged – and Zimbabwean government officials charge that this is deliberate – is the fact that displaced persons sought and lost a court ruling to stop the clean-up. On 03 June, a High Court judge, Justice Karwi, declared the action lawful, stressing unlawful structures and settlements could not be condoned at law.
In Harare itself, residents whether from the low-class “high-density” suburbs, or from the rich “low-density” suburbs, acknowledge the need for the clean-up, and generally welcome the new look in their city which seems to have recovered its luster of yore as the “Sunshine City”.
Ironically, MDC won the urban seats precisely from protest votes arising from weak delivery by municipal authorities. This included mounts of refuse which went uncollected for months on end, and bursting sewers arising from overcrowding. So real was this that Zanu-PF was forced to promise a comprehensive urban renewal plan in its March poll manifesto.
But all these are the small points of the saga which still do not answer why so mundane an occurrence triggers such political and media frenzy in respect of Zimbabwe. What Zimbabwe has sought to do is remarkably mundane to a point of not being newsworthy. Clearance of slums is an abiding feature and dynamic of urban settlement, in fact as mundane as the appearance of slums themselves.
Kenya, the home of the UN’s habitate offices, has itself been particularly severe in handling slums that are in the habit of sprouting around its urban conurbations, and in some cases even challenging them. And these habitats have been credited with the exportation of violent crimes and other vices, an indictment South Africa with its vast slums would be ready to echo too.
Ironically, a few years back, south Africa dealt decisively with squatter camps that sprouted and ended up encroaching on private land (and that means white land). In May this year, the same country suffered serious convulsions as slum and shack dwellers riotously pressed for decent homes.
Nigeria, itself a darling of the West, routed the slum dwellers of Abuja, cleaned up the debris that left Abuja a shining contrast to Lagos.
The story is the same whether one is in Mozambique or in Mexico, and yes, in Britain, Zimbabwe’s foremost critic. In all these cases, not a lip moved; not a single envoy was dispatched from New York.
If Zimbabwe’s critics crave for politically motivated demolitions, they have had lots of them in the Middle East where Israel has been wantonly Palestinian homes with impunity. Not once did America, or Britain which was responsible for this timeless conflict in the first place, raise a voice in support of an occupied people whose only habitats were being assaulted.
So why treat Zimbabwe differently?
In the Western scheme of things, Zimbabwe should be under the microscope for upsetting the order of things the West has ordained globally. It dared take its land, in the process expropriating “white-owned” land.
Judging by the latest reaction from the West, it would appear this is the bedrock of Zimbabwe’s encounter with the Western world. In the context of the debate on land, the latest protests do not make sense.
At the height of land occupations, Mugabe was accused by the West of not dealing with “squatters” (landless Zimbabweans who had occupied white-run commercial farms) with a firm hand. He was accused of undermining “the rule of law”.
Today, it would appear, those squatters have become heroes worth the West’s pursuit in Zimbabwe. When a Zimbabwean is a squatter and when the rule of law breaks down, seem dependant on the colour of the interests threatened. And therein lies the key to the unusual reaction to the mundane clean-up campaign which done elsewhere, would have passed unnoticed.
The figures of displaced persons kept leaping in Western media. From a few hundreds, the figure for Harare soared to two million and this in a city whose population is about 2.5million. And to corroborate that, the BBC ran a satellite picture of … well it is anyone’s guess.
This suggested only half a million people were in homes in Harare! Was Harare a war zone? Yes, it would appear, but of a different kind of war.
Clearly for Jack Straw, the clean-up was another instance of “tyranny” which could only be put right if Mugabe “steps aside”. If this operation amounts to “tyranny”, is it being implied that democrats and democracies are expected to condone slums, crime and vices? Only in Zimbabwe, it would seem. And what human rights grow and thrive in such harsh social conditions?
Britain and the Western world’s reaction to what goes on in Zimbabwe depends on how well or unwell the opposition MDC is on the ground. Presently the MDC is in a parlous state, in fact it has been since its defeat in the March poll. It is in the throes of a vicious leadership struggle and crisis of vision. By contrast, Zanu-PF has been made stronger by the March poll, rumours of infighting notwithstanding. And it is beginning to use its enhanced majority in Parliament to consolidate.
Time is not on Britain’s side. Straw’s plea, or even frustration with South Africa’s “quiet diplomacy” on Zimbabwe seems to have grown desperate, not so much because “tyranny” on Zimbabwe, but because the opposition has grown weaker at a time when Britain is best positioned to fight Mugabe (control of EU and G8).
Short of direct military intervention, Britain finds the MDC too blunt an instrument to further its goal of “regime change”. But direct intervention would trigger a stout reaction from Africa, part from lacking in legality and legitimacy.
Britain badly needs African voices to legitimize its intervention and quest for regime change. Hence the stunts on African capitals. Better still, it needs the UN, and this is where Kothari was most helpful. But only a good beginning. The real trophy is Kofi Annan whose condemnation would place on Zimbabwe on UN notice. Everything else would neatly follow, what with the enabling clause of “humanitarian intervention”. Or “the responsibility to protect” clause being proposed in the latest UN reforms. In the meantime, the victims of Darfur may languish while Harare, with its “bigger” humanitarian crisis, hogs all the attention.
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