Zimbabwe July 2005 |
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| Police throw homeless out of churches, (Sapa-AFP, 2005-07-21):-Zimbabwean police raided several churches which were sheltering victims of a controversial government demolition campaign and forced hundreds of homeless to a camp outside the country's second city of Bulawayo, a church spokesman said Thursday. "Police last night barged into churches in Nketa suburb and they took everyone and dumped them at Umgusa transit camp," said Useni Sibanda, a coordinator for churches that were assisting hundreds of homeless in Bulawayo. "As we speak the police are moving to more churches in city and other suburbs. Most of these people were not willing to go to the camp and we were organising for them to go to their rural homes." Sibanda said conditions at the Bulawayo transit camp were unfit for human habitation. "The camp does not have sufficient water facilities and there are no tents to shelter the people," Sibanda. "We are concerned because babies and sick people will be exposed." The Zimbabwean government launched the two-pronged 'Operation Murambatsvina (Get rid of filth)/ 'Restore Order' around May 19, flattening shacks, market stalls, nurseries and even chicken coops. The United Nations estimates that 200,000 people have been left homeless in the campaign to demolish shacks and other unauthorised dwellings, but the opposition which has denounced the operation as a new wave of repression, say up to 1.5 million Zimbabweans have lost their homes. President Robert Mugabe has consistently defended the drive saying it was an urban renewal project to rid the country of crime and grime. Some 3,000 homeless from Harare are staying in makeshift tents on Caledonia Farm, some 25 kilometers (15 miles) east of the capital, in what visiting South African clergy said where "appalling and shocking" conditions. On Wednesday the government began moving some former slum dwellers from the transit camp to what remained of their destroyed shacks. | |
South African Migration Project (SAMP) - Queen's University - http://www.queensu.ca/samp |