Zimbabwe June 2005 |
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| Comment on evictions, (The Standard, 2005-06-06):-In both law and practice, education and shelter became human rights for all citizens of Zimbabwe on attainment of Independence in 1980. The government's actions over recent weeks demonstrate utter contempt for the rights of children to education, and for the right of citizens to shelter. It is the main responsibility of any elected government to protect the poor, weak and vulnerable groups in society. A secure and sheltered home and access to education are critical in preparing Zimbabweans for their social and economic well-being, and for meeting the new challenges presented by the era of information and communication technologies. But we have seen during recent weeks that the same government that won international acclaim for its commitment to education for all of its citizens has suddenly recanted. School children have become victims of the joint government/City of Harare Operation Restore Order/Murambatsvina. If it had not been for circumstances beyond control, school children would have been writing their June examinations. There is no prize for guessing what effect the destruction of their houses would have on their ability to perform well in examinations. But not only have they not been able to write the examinations, many will now miss them altogether because they have been uprooted and scattered far away from centres they had registered to write the examinations. The government, of course, is not one to let such things trouble its conscience. Last year, its security agencies descended on Porta Farm, a squatter settlement it created ahead of the October 1991 Commonwealth Heads of State and Government Meeting and drove the settlers out. No notice was deemed necessary and the plight of school children who were due to write their primary school finishing examinations, were not issues the government bothered itself with. There has been general contempt in the way the government has dealt with ordinary people in the recent past. Instead of learning from the mistakes of Porta Farm, where people were forced to relocate to Caledonia Farm near Mabvuku, the government has decided to repeat the Porta Farm debacle, but this time on a grand scale. It is difficult to reconcile the actions of the government and those of elected representatives, supposedly governing in the interests of the people who put it into power. The critical element of consultation has been wiped out of the process of governance. Instead, the government has decided to create a humanitarian crisis. There is no difference between the destruction that the natural phenomenon, the tsunami, wrecked on South East Asia and the theatre of tragedy that is being re-enacted in Sakubva, Chikanga in Mutare, and Mbare, Kambuzuma, Mufakose and many other high-density suburbs of Harare. Nobody disputes the need to instil order and maintain a clean capital. But what is callous is the manner in which the whole exercise has been and continues to be conducted. The education of many children who have to travel from one suburb to the next has been adversely affected because school children, as do adults, wait for hours on end for transport that never comes. It is common cause that many of the school children travel from the high-density areas to the Iow-density suburbs for their education, but thanks to the government - it has managed to place all imaginable obstacles in the way of children's pursuit of education. The only explanation one finds in all this is that the government has finally decided that it will not bother about elections, and instead it will continue to rule by other means. What sane person will go out and vote to retain a government whose cruelty and brutality outclasses that of former oppressors. And it is this that hurts so much and is distressing. Zimbabweans expected a much more sympathetic conduct in the bid to restore order and maintain Harare as a proud and clean capital. They did not expect a fascist approach. It is most insensitive for the government to uproot people from Churu Farm and plant them at Hatcliffe Extension or to encourage land invasion in and around the cities and then to turn around and proclaim these settlements illegal, when it is the one that identified where these settlements should be located. There may have been rogue elements that infiltrated these settlements, but it is the function of the security agencies to investigate and weed these out. It is not as if the anti-social elements are unknown. They live with and among the people, and the people will know who is engaged in what extra-legal activities. What the government has carried out in recent weeks and continues to is a new form of apartheid. | |
South African Migration Project (SAMP) - Queen's University - http://www.queensu.ca/samp |