Zimbabwe Evictions Continue in Defiance of International Outcry

HARARE, Zimbabwe, August 12, 2005 (ENS) - After housing and business evictions since mid-May displaced an estimated 700,000 people in Zimbabwe, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) says it will rent housing for more than 100 evicted families with disabled children and provide them with transportation and business investment.

It was just 24 hours after UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s Special Envoy on human settlements, Anna Tibaijuka, returned to UN Headquarters in New York from a two week fact-finding mission to Zimbabwe.

Anna Tibaijuka, head of UN Habitat and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s Special Envoy to Zimbabwe, shares a moment with displaced families. (Photo courtesy UN Habitat)

But the following day thousands of people at Porta Farm, a settlement 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the capital, Harare, watched horrified as bulldozers destroyed their homes, for the second time in a month.

One resident, who declined to give his name, was living at Porta Farm a month ago when bulldozers destroyed his home with thousands of others. Around 4,000 people were forced to flee - either to their rural homes, or to a government transit camp, Caledonia Farm.

The 64 year old man, his wife and their five grandchildren, spent three weeks in Caledonia Farm, before it was closed without warning. He then brought his family back to the ruins of Porta Farm where he started to rebuild. Forty-eight hours later the bulldozers returned.

“What am I now supposed to do?” he asks. “I have five grandchildren to care for, and men half my age can’t get work. I am desperate...do something for me.”

This family may not benefit from the UNICEF rentals, but Barbara Fero will. An HIV-infected widow whose home in the working-class suburb of Mbare was demolished and whose nine year old daughter is disabled, said the rented housing "is exactly what we need."

"Since the evictions I have been constantly sick," Fero says. "I do not have a place to take a rest, I cannot afford adequate meals, I am on ARV [anti-retroviral] treatment and I cannot afford to get my next monthly supply. My daughter, Elaine, needs to be accompanied to her school as the transport is no longer reliable and I do not have money."

The Zimbabwe government's bulldozers leave destruction in their wake where homes and businesses once stood. (Photo courtesy UNICEF)

UNICEF said it had joined the UN World Food Programme, the International Office of Migration, the Zimbabwe Red Cross Society and local nongovernmental organizations in providing hundreds of thousands of people with blankets and plastic sheeting for protection from the cold, along with sanitation facilities, food and shelter. UNICEF is also distributing 90,000 liters of water each day.

The organizations are also supplying chronically ill people with home-based treatments.

"We have been working around the clock for the better part of three months and are improving the situation for tens of thousands, but such is the gravity of the situation that we are asking the international community to support the people of Zimbabwe," said Festo Kavishe, UNICEF's Representative in the country.

The United Nations plans to launch a humanitarian appeal this week to provide shelter for the 300,000 people worst affected by government evictions in Zimbabwe, said the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The Harare government said it is clearing the urban areas in order to curb crimes.

To make matters worse, the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority has not been able to prevent a series of prolonged, countrywide blackouts that started in April and worsened last week. The power authority said delayed coal deliveries, equipment breakdowns and interruptions in electricity imports were to blame, state media reported.

The problems are mainly a result of shortages of foreign currency to purchase spare parts to repair the generators.

Meanwhile, ZimOnline reports that Harare has refused to allow into Zimbabwe 37 metric tons of food gathered by the South African Council of Churches until documentary proof was provided the food was not genetically modified.

The South African government was expected to issue a certificate confirming that the food was not engineered on Wednesday. Trucks full of maize, beans, and oil that were supposed to leave for Zimbabwe last week are still in Johannesburg because Harare rejected written assurances by the food's supplier was not genetically modified.

The South African Cabinet has agreed in principle to loan the Zimbabwe government of Robert Mugabe enough money to avert disaster at the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The IMF will expel Zimbabwe on September 26 if it does not take repay more than US$270 million in arrears.

Briefing the media Wednesday after the Cabinet meeting, South African government communications head Joel Netshitenzhe said his government's approach is based on the principle that such assistance should benefit the Zimbabwean people as a whole, "within the context of their program of economic recovery and political normalization."

The loan is seen as crucial to preventing the collapse of Zimbabwe's economy. The pressure of refugees flooding into South Africa from its impoverished neighbor could prove burdensome for the South African economy.