Zimbabwe July 2005 |
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| Blitz leaves Mbare’s poor helpless, (The Zimbabwe Independent, 2005-07-22):-A Film clip shown on TV illustrating pre-Independence racism against blacks depicts a man glorifying how Independence brought about liberty to walk along pavements unhindered while lyrics from a rap music trio popularised by national radio mocks occupants of backyard shacks as homeless snobs. Although both media depict distinct eras, their core messages now sound out of sync after government launched a slum clearance operation. Zimbabwe's urban centres have been cleared of backyard tenants. Informal traders comprising mainly poor blacks are no longer allowed to hawk their wares on the pavements and at supermarket entrances. Neither are the blind permitted to rattle their begging bowls along the same sidewalks. Backyard lodgers, beggars and informal traders have become undesirable "filth" that government loathes for tainting the urban landscape. Municipal police riding pillion with the state police are vigorously implementing by-laws prohibiting street vending as part of government's vision of regaining the capital's former "Sunshine City" status. The ban strikes a familiar chord with discrimination against the urban poor enforced during the pre-Independence era. Ten-year-old Simukai Paurosi plays catch-me-if-you-can with three of his age peers, dodging between concrete pillars supporting the top structure of a deserted traders' market that once deserved conversion into a tourist attraction for its diversity of activities. Its exquisite array of African artefacts and hand-made trinkets, blending perfectly with the chatter of haggling subsistence traders, earned it plaudits from hordes of fascinated foreign tourists before the sector slumped in 2000. And squatting in the midst of the capital's oldest working class suburb of Mbare wind howls through the yawning Musika structure and its cold concrete floors that show signs of flaking. Evident grime and gloom marking the structure though do little to discourage kids from scampering within its vacant stalls. Few would suspect the kids are providing sentry for their 68-year-old grandmother selling vegetables and roasted peanuts at one corner of the deserted market. "The kids playing out there warn me when they spot municipal police prowling around here giving me time to hide my wares," says Tariro Ramushu, pointing to a nook in the market wall where she conceals her stocks. "The trick is not to display the whole range of what I am selling. It gives my customers limited choice though but they seem to understand times are tough. It is hide and seek," says the widowed vendor. Mbare Musika had become home to scores of informal traders and vegetable vendors until a recent government decision to ban such activities through its Operation Murambatsvina (Drive Out Filth). The internationally condemned operation worsened already deteriorating living standards among residents of the suburb. Last week, a representative of the Rhema Church, Reverend Ron Steele, and a member of the South African Council of Churches (SACC) fact-finding team to Zimbabwe was overawed by the destruction. Steele says of his visit to Mbare, what he witnessed was "just stand after stand and it was just rubble. It was pathetic. The flea market was deserted." Being one of the pioneer working class suburbs in the capital, Mbare is home to the largest population of pensioners and the elderly among its 300 000 residents. "The oldest identified pensioners are more than 87 years old. These are the founder fathers and mothers of the capital," says trade unionist Gift Chimanikire. "The average monthly pension among most of the residents who formerly worked as housekeepers and general hands in the surrounding industries is below $50 000," he says. To augment their meagre pensions, the majority of the residents constructed lean-tos and outbuildings to their main houses, living off rentals earned from lodgers. Extremely hard times forced the elderly like Ramushu to move out from the main house into one of the three outbuildings to enable her to fend for six orphaned grandchildren. Two of her daughters and a son, she says, died in the past three years, leaving behind six children of school-going age. "I have struggled to send them to school, scrounging for money through vending. But the police chase me off the streets where I sell saying it is illegal," Ramushu bemoans. "If I don't sell vegetables, the future of my grandchildren looks bleak." Ramushu recalls how the suburb fostered its own genre of high-profile people who are now leaders in government, commerce and industry. She claims their parents could most probably have raised school fees through selling eggs, vegetables and fruit on the streets of Mbare. "Now that they are in positions of authority they want to deny my grandchildren similar opportunities to get educated," she says. An estimated 30% of the population in the suburb comprises jobless youths that completed high school. Due to a collapsing economy, the high school graduates have bloated the ranks of the unemployed. Economists estimate Zimbabwe's unemployment figures at 80%. Ramushu's plight is a microcosm of the dilemma faced by urban residents, especially among the elderly in other towns and cities throughout Zimbabwe. It has been replicated as a result of the seven-week police blitz on informal settlements and subsistence traders. Harare Catholic priest, Father Oskar Wermter of the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, says: "A few vendors are timidly emerging again on the streets with just a few vegetables and fruits for sale, not more than they can grab and run with if the police come round the corner. You get arrested if caught vending." Wermter, who runs a relief operation with other Justice and Peace activists in the suburb, says most people who were self-employed or depended on income from renting out rooms are ruined. He says he finds it difficult to get into the relief centre owing to throngs of people jostling in front of the gate. "People are hungry and desperate wondering where their next meal will come from. The sick, the handicapped, the elderly may get elbowed out of the way, the bedridden may be left out altogether. "Mbare has an unusually large elderly population," Wermter points out. "Leaders of our parish neighbourhood groups come with lists of people we have not been able to assist yet and tell harrowing stories of biting hunger." | |
South African Migration Project (SAMP) - Queen's University - http://www.queensu.ca/samp |