Zimbabwe June 2005 |
|
| Reflections on a Zimbabwean Tsunami, (Sunday Mirror, 2005-06-12):-They describe it in all kinds of terms and expletives, depending on which side of the divide over Zimbabwe one stands. “This is sheer madness”, remarks an ambassador to Zimbabwe, the hatred for the country evidently difficult to conceal. “Those poor people, their families and belongings … all out there in the cold”, the ambassador continues, clearly concerned less about the casualties of Murambatsvina and “Restore Order”, than with the political opportunities – or political ammunition – with which to launch yet another diplomatic offensive against Zimbabwe. But even the best of Zimbabwe’s friends in the international community are puzzled and bewildered, as much as to the objectives and methods attendant to Murambatsvina and “Restore Order”, as about the obvious humanitarian consequences of a process that has displaced and affected so many people’s lives in its wake. Zimbabweans, at home and abroad, are still trying to come to terms with yet another spectre in their country’s history. In lighter moments, some mainly those obviously remote from the action and its devastating consequences, have called it Zimbabwe’s version of a (social) tsunami; and only those actually caught up in this crossfire between the stated public policy objectives of Murambatsvina and “Restore Order” on the one hand, and, on the other, the unintended tragic consequences of the implementation process, can variously tell their sad and sordid stories. Others, like the man who committed suicide in Gweru last week, could not live to bear the immediate impact of the Zimbabwean tsunami. Theirs, like those of many other citizens caught up physically and emotionally in all this, is a story which, however brief, must remain etched on the memory of our nation. It will, like other traumatic moments in the life of this great country, live to remind us of the realities and frailties that invariably accompany the journey that has been Zimbabwe’s in recent years. “Ko, ma comrades, zvamakupaza dzimba dzevanhu, zvaitaseiko?” (Comrades, why are you destroying people’s houses?), I asked two members of the Zimbabwe Republic Police at a roadblock the other day. “Kana dzeduwo dzimba nema tuckshop, dzapazwa… hongu ndisu tinebasa rekupazisa …” (“Even our houses and tuckshops were destroyed, yes we are responsible for the demolition process”), the young officer replies, bereft of any bitterness or anger, but intent on impressing that his is to have the job done. So it is with all tsunamis, natural or social. It is only after the fact, when the dust has settled and the losses and costs audited, that the origins are traced, scapegoats identified and others sacrificed, as part of the inevitable political ritual that, more often than not, ends as an obituary for a policy so good in its intent but seriously flawed in terms of its implementation. But this is not the first “Operation Clean-up” in Zimbabwe’s recent history, as the country’s Women’s Action Group website is wont to remind us: “Women’s Action Group (WAG) was founded on 31 October 1983 in response to “Operation Clean-up”, a government action ostensibly aimed at ridding the streets of prostitutes. Over the weekend of 28 to 30 October, soldiers and police swarmed through the major centres of Zimbabwe making arrests on any women they found alone on the streets. Over 6 000 women were arrested, including old women, school girls as young as 11 years old, young mothers with babies on their backs, and nurses coming off duty. “The arrests were not confined to women on the streets. In some cases police and soldiers invaded places such as theatres, dragging women out. Police even forced their way into private houses, arresting women and taking them to police cells or to prison. These women were taken to Chikurubi and an old assembly point in the Zambezi Valley called Mushumbi Pools, where some were kept for two weeks and others as long as eight weeks.” I recall then an incident in which a police officer on duty in that “clean-up” coincidentally discovered that his own wife, on return from the shops with a child on her back, had been rounded up and dumped on the very truck he was supervising. Or, that incident in which, in a similar “clean-up” in Tanzania in those days, a senior army officer had to be arraigned before the courts for murder: on following up his wife (and baby) who had been rounded up, he discovered them in an assembly point, the child dead and his wife in a sordid physical and mental state. He could not bear the sight and grief: he pulled out his service pistol and shot dead the soldier on duty. In the case of the Zimbabwean tsunami of 1983, it had begun I was told at the time, with a report made to cabinet by a senior minister who had just returned from a conference somewhere in North Africa. During the conference concerned, colleagues had complimented him, not only on the beauty of the “Sunshine City” that was Harare in those early days of post-independence, but also about the women, especially those who frequented the hotel spots during similar meetings in Zimbabwe. So, on that occasion, it was the Ministry of Labour and Social Services whose duty it was to initiate the clean up, with the help of the police and soldiers. Two weeks after the latest tsunami, the Zimbabwean state is in private still at odds within itself as to which of its departments actually initiated and instituted the process. For, almost simultaneously, local government authorities and the Zimbabwean Republic Police (ZRP) were speaking about the need and urgency to “clean-up” and “restore order”. The Police were talking about ridding the urban areas of criminal elements while the city and town authorities preached the need to restore “sunshine” and “cleanliness”. But in the confusion that became obvious as the process unfolded, especially where the right did not know what the left was doing and vice versa, the twin objectives of “clean-up” and “restore order” took on their own momentum. And, as the young police officer intimated in the incident cited above, state functionaries, demolition brigades and bulldozers became mere robots in a mission the policy origins and social consequences of which became quite secondary to the imperative of having the job done. As in all such situations in which responsible authorities become also the victims of the confusion, the state has to maintain and sustain a bold face, trying to assign a rational policy framework to a process already gone so awry and potentially explosive, but defending it at the highest level and in the highest places. It is still too early to conclude whether the damage control process is working, in the form of both promises and projects to resettle people in new urban zones, including those in which their houses and dwellings had been razed to the ground a week earlier. Hence the cynics among us might be forgiven for reminding us of this spectacle: hardly five years ago, cabinet ministers stood on the same ground as they are today, allocating stands for houses and dwellings which have had to be destroyed over the last fortnight; and then to stand again on the very same ground and to the same people allocating stands for houses and dwellings. Behind the scenes, there is no doubt that post-mortem in high official circles; should at least assist in explaining the origins and auditing the conduct of Murambatsvina and “Restore Order”, enhance the process of healing the wounds and, hopefully, also create a tabla rasa for better things to come, a cleaner urban environment and the institutionalization of the rule of law. But will we have learnt the obvious lessons and thereby try to pre-empt future (social and political) tsunamis? | |
South African Migration Project (SAMP) - Queen's University - http://www.queensu.ca/samp |