HomepageHowcomyoucomRaceandHistoryRootsWomenTrinicenter
Homepage
Rastafari Speaks Archive
Buy Books
ARCHIVE HOMEMESSAGE BOARDREASONING FORUMARTICLESNEWS WEBLOG

Read Only : Rastafari Speaks Reasoning Archives

Rastafari Speaks Archive 1

Re: Zimbabwe: Speedily regularise informal sector

Lies lies and more government lies. How anyone can believe anything the Herald says or anything associated with Zanu pf is hard for me to understand.

The Guardian

Mugabe praises police after 1.5m left homeless

Agencies
Friday June 24, 2005

The Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe, today congratulated police on their
role in a campaign against slum-dwellers that has left 1.5 million people
homeless.
The campaign has triggered a wave of international condemnation and seen
thousands of homes bulldozed and torched over the past month.

Although it has targeted opponents of Mr Mugabe's regime, it is officially
described as an urban renewal campaign.

Operation Murambatsvina - a word meaning 'drive out trash' - has resulted in
the destruction of shantytowns, street markets and even vegetable gardens
set up by many city dwellers facing acute food shortages.

Addressing a police graduation ceremony on Thursday, Mr Mugabe said the
campaign was wiping out havens for criminals and black market profiteers.
Last week, state radio quoted him as saying he was "happy that a new breed
of organised entrepreneurs will emerge".

"The government is fully behind the clean up and applauded the police for
ensuring the success of the operation," he said. Zimbabwe's opposition, much
of whose support is among the urban poor, says the campaign is aimed at
punishing people for voting against the ruling Zanu-PF party in the
country's recent elections.

At the G8 foreign ministers' summit in London today, a closing statement
reserved its strongest language for condemnation of the campaign, calling on
the African Union to speak out against the situation.

"We believe that there really is a high responsibility placed on African
leaders not to continue to turn a blind eye to what is going on in
Zimbabwe," the British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, said.

"If the reports are simply half true - and we believe them to be much more
than half true - this is a situation of serious international concern."

The Conservative foreign affairs spokeswoman, Anne McIntosh, said the
government should appeal to the UN to take international action on the
issue. "These crimes against humanity cannot be allowed to continue," she
said.

More than 200 international human rights and civic groups demanded today
that Zimbabwe stop the campaign, releasing smuggled videos of families
forced to sleep in the open in the winter cold.

Police prevented journalists from filming the demolition campaign, and
footage was secretly collected by the church-based Solidarity Peace Trust.

At Hatcliffe Extension, a Harare township, residents said those who did not
leave on their own were driven in trucks to the outskirts of the capital.

"We were dumped here by people with whips," one young man - whose name was
not released for fear of retribution - said. "We don't know what went wrong.
We were given these stands by the government."

Pius Ncube, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo - a sharp critic of
the evictions - said he was so angered by the campaign he was "ready to
stand before a gun and be shot."

Answering questions during a stormy parliamentary session yesterday, the
Zimbabwean justice minister, Patrick Chinamasa, conceded that harm had been
done to legitimate housing by what he called a "clean-up" operation he said
was intended to flush out criminals.

"We are aware that there is damage, people are homeless and so forth," the
minister said. "But government has put into place the necessary logistics to
address those immediate concerns such as health."

The Zimbabwean government has pledged to build new houses for those it has
made homeless.

Since police launched the operation in Harare on May 19, it has been
extended throughout the country, resulting in sporadic rioting as
impoverished residents tried to resist the destruction of their homes and
livelihoods.

International rights groups say at least 300,000 people have lost their
homes, and the UN has put the total as high as 1.5 million. Zimbabwe police
acknowledge only around 120,000.

Messages In This Thread

Zimbabwe: Speedily regularise informal sector *LINK*
Re: Zimbabwe: Speedily regularise informal sector *LINK*
Re: Zimbabwe: Speedily regularise informal sector
Re: Zimbabwe: Speedily regularise informal sector
Re: Zimbabwe: Speedily regularise informal sector
Re: Zimbabwe: Speedily regularise informal sector
Re: Zimbabwe: Speedily regularise informal sector
Re: Zimbabwe: Speedily regularise informal sector
Re: Zimbabwe: Speedily regularise informal sector
Re: Zimbabwe: Speedily regularise informal sector
Re: Zimbabwe: Speedily regularise informal sector
Re: Zimbabwe: Speedily regularise informal sector
Re: Zimbabwe: Speedily regularise informal sector
Mugabe orders army to rebuild shanty homes *LINK*
Re: Zimbabwe: Speedily regularise informal sector
Re: Zimbabwe: Speedily regularise informal sector


FAIR USE NOTICE:
This site may at times contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml


Copyright © 2003-2014 RastafariSpeaks.com & AfricaSpeaks.com