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Not even an orphanage was safe from Robert Mugabe's purge of the slums

Thread ID: 18719 | Posts: 12 | Started: 2005-06-19

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Sertorius [OP]

2005-06-19 15:50 | User Profile

Not even an orphanage was safe from Robert Mugabe's purge of the slums By Neil Connery in Harare (Filed: 19/06/2005)

It is a wasteland. Street after street razed in a scene that looks like a natural disaster. The hundreds of thousands who have been left homeless are calling it Zimbabwe's tsunami. But man, not nature, is to blame for the destruction enveloping this country.

The full force of Robert Mugabe's state is destroying homes and lives in what it calls Operation Restore Order. But all that can be seen is chaos and trauma. There is no compassion, only carefully executed brutality.

Bulldozers destroy the Hatcliffe orphanage Bulldozers start the demolition of the Hatcliffe orphanage

At Hatcliffe orphanage, run by Dominican sisters, the nuns, workers and 180 orphans were given a day to get out before the bulldozers arrived. Many of the children had lost their parents to Aids. Now, thanks to what the regime justifies as a crackdown on illegal settlements and traders, they have lost the roof over their heads and have nowhere to go.

Harrowing details of shattered lives tumbled from the lips of Sister Patricia Walsh. "There were people all over the place. There was smoke coming up from where some things had been burned. It was one of the most painful experiences I've ever known.

"I was here during the liberation struggle [before independence in 1980] and I never thought I would see the day that this was happening to Zimbabweans.

"When I arrived on Monday they were all outside. There was furniture and goods all over the place, children screaming, sick people in agony. A young Zimbabwe boy forages for wood Revenge: ‘Here is a government that has become morally bankrupt and that has run out of ideas’

"How does one say that Peter, who's 10, and his little brother, who's four, are 'illegal'? We had provided them with a wooden hut when their mother was dying. She has died in the meantime, and now these two little people had their home destroyed in the middle of the night, we get there, they are sitting crying in the rubbish. What do we do with them?"

She gave other examples of sick and vulnerable people - adults and children - whose lives were being destroyed. "Veronica is an elderly widow who is chronically ill herself, she has three young grandchildren from her dead daughter. Her home is destroyed. She is wearing rosary beads around her neck, an apron with the picture of the Sacred Heart and a T-shirt with President Mugabe's photo. She has tried all means to survive.

"Some people came and said, 'Sister, there are two people who are dying please come'. One of them, Mary, who is out in the open all night lying on an old damp mattress can't move with pain, she has shingles, which is open and bleeding. What is worse - her tears or her bleeding wounds?

"I felt paralysed. Anne delivered a baby a week ago, she is critically ill and is on the verge of death. What do we do with her? We give her painkillers, we give her blankets, we give her food, which she in unable to eat. What is going to happen to her baby?"

In the ruins of his former home in the Harare suburb of Mbare, a man called Isaac prepared for another night in the freezing mid-winter cold. His wife and four children were huddled around a small fire.

Three pieces of corrugated iron that they managed to salvage from the mess left behind by the bulldozers are the walls of their new home.

"This is our tsunami," he said. "We are cold and alone and who cares? What are we meant to do? We have no money, there is nowhere for us to go. What have done wrong?" Tendai Biti, an MP for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, says that Operation Restore Order is really all about revenge. He added: "I think the major reason is Mugabe is very vindictive. They stole the March election and they know the extent to which they stole the election. So they are literally saying in their mind, 'You people you don't love us, you don't care about us, we don't care about you so to hell with you' "

Fr William Guri, a Catholic priest who has been trying to help those affected, has had meetings with government ministers to beg them to change their policies. He said: "I have come to a point where I feel that as a nation we are alone.

"As a priest I am trained to preach and give hope to the people and here is a situation where you can not hope against hope.

"How can the people say God is with us?

"Here is a government that has become morally bankrupt and that has run out of ideas.

"The most appropriate term is to call this a tsunami because the devastation has been so wide-ranging. The worst thing is that it is a man-made tsunami."

• Neil Connery is the Africa Correspondent for ITV News

© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2005. Terms & Conditions of reading. Commercial information. Privacy and Cookie Policy. XML RSS feeds available [url]http://portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/06/19/wzim19.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/06/19/ixnewstop.html[/url] ============================ I didn't realize that the Israelis were training Mugabe's goons. [IMG]http://portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/graphics/2005/06/19/wzim19b.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/graphics/2005/06/19/wzim19a.jpg[/IMG]

Walter Yannis

2005-06-19 16:07 | User Profile

It was only a few years ago the Nogs decided they didn't need dem bad ol' white men and kicked them off the land.

In that short time Zimbabwe went from being a reasonably prosperous country that all Zimbabweans could take pride in to a moral sewer that is an affront to all humanity.

Amazing.

This must be something like a record, even for Congoids.

Negroes truly are astonishing failures. We're talking monumental incompetence here - arrogant idiocy that no other human group could ever hope to equal.

I say we give credit where it's due!

Way to go, Nogs!! :cheers:

Sertorius

2005-06-19 16:17 | User Profile

Walter,

I'm almost at a loss of words when I read about the things Mugabe does to that country. This is nothing more than a form of canniblism. Mugabe is a person, who, despite the expensive suits, really has one foot in civilization and the other foot in the jungle. He isn't worried, though. He still has the Bush Administration to help out.

Blond Knight

2005-06-20 19:48 | User Profile

When you add up the IQ's of the entire Madgabe administration, you are still far short of a three digit number.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ [url]http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4111218.stm[/url]

Zimbabwe blitz to hit rich areas The crackdown on illegal structures in Zimbabwe will move this week to the rich northern suburbs of the capital, Harare, police say.

A police spokesman says that many houses have been turned into offices without planning permission.

Correspondents say Zimbabwe inherited strict colonial planning laws, but has failed to enforce them in recent years.

Some 200,000 people have lost their homes, the United Nations says. So far, mostly poor areas have been targeted.

Many people are living on the streets, while other have returned to their rural homes, encouraged by the government.

This was everything I had - more importantly, this was everything these children had. What will we do?

Mbuya Mushambi, 80 The opposition says Operation Murambatsvina [Drive out rubbish] is intended to punish urban voters who rejected President Robert Mugabe in March polls.

Mr Mugabe says the blitz is needed to "restore sanity" in urban areas overrun with criminals.

Officials also want to stamp out the black market, which they blame for Zimbabwe's economic meltdown.

Toilets destroyed

"We are moving everywhere, including the northern suburbs and some rural areas, everywhere where there is an illegal structure, we will get there," Harare police spokesman Whisper Bondayi told the AFP news agency.

The state-owned Herald reports Inspector Bondayi as saying that some of these "illegal" offices are engaged in shady deals.

He says the offices should return to the city centre, which many businesses have fled in recent years due to overcrowding and rising street crime.

Offices signs are now a common sight in previously residential areas.

In colonial times, the northern suburbs were reserved for whites but many rich black people now own homes there.

The Herald reports that over the weekend, police destroyed outside toilets in the commuter town of Chitungwiza, south of Harare.

Many of the structures targeted for demolition have been illegally built in gardens and the police mistakenly believed the toilets were illegal extensions, the Herald says.

Angry women confronted the policemen responsible, the paper says.

Grandmother's woes

Mbuya Mushambi, 80, says that she was advised by her bank to build extensions in her Harare backyard to rent out to earn the money to look after her grandchildren.

Their parents had died from Aids-related problems.

These extensions have now been demolished by the police.

"This was everything I had - more importantly, this was everything these children had. What will we do?" she asked.

The United Nations children's fund (Unicef) has given her blankets and cooking materials.

"It all helps and I am very grateful - but I preferred it when I could look after my own," said Ms Mushambi. Story from BBC NEWS:

xmetalhead

2005-06-20 20:12 | User Profile

And Mugabe's biggest cheerleaders are those barbarian "leaders" in South Africa, like Mbeke and Mandela, who delight in seeing dead White people.

If the whole place rots, so be it.

Sertorius

2005-06-20 20:44 | User Profile

[QUOTE] Mr Mugabe says the blitz is needed to "restore sanity" in urban areas overrun with criminals.[/QUOTE] He could go a long way to accomplish this by killing himself and setting an example for the rest of his followers.

xmetalhead

2005-06-20 20:50 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Sertorius]He could go a long way to accomplish this by killing himself and setting an example for the rest of his followers.[/QUOTE]

Sert, no one ever said blacks were too smart. :biggrin:

Blond Knight

2005-06-23 00:55 | User Profile

Orphanages, outhouses, lean-to's , and now vegetable gardens! But really folks...We really are all eekwall. :evil: :afro: = :dung:

[url]http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2005/06/zimbabwe_begins.php[/url]

Sapa-AP, June 21

Harare—Zimbabwe police have extended a demolition campaign targeting the homes and livelihoods of the urban poor to the vegetable gardens they rely on for food, saying the crops planted on vacant lots are damaging the environment.

President Robert Mugabe was quoted Tuesday as saying concern about the campaign was misplaced and agreeing to allow in a UN observer.

The crackdown on urban farming—at a time of food shortages in Zimbabwe—is the latest escalation in the government’s monthlong Operation Murambatsvina, or Drive Out Trash, which has seen police torch the shacks of poor city dwellers, arrest street vendors and demolish their kiosks.

Mugabe defends the campaign as a cleanup drive. But the political opposition, which has its base among the urban poor, says the campaign is meant to punish its supporters.

The United Nations estimates the campaign has left at least 1,5 million people homeless in the winter cold. Police say more than 30 000 have also been arrested, most of them street vendors the government accuses of sabotaging the failing economy by selling black market goods.

Senior assistant police commissioner Edmore Veterai said Zimbabwean authorities were now targeting urban farming, saying the practice was causing “massive environmental damage,” state radio reported Tuesday.

The destruction of city plots is a painful reminder of one of the most hated policies of the white government that ruled before independence in 1980—the random slashing of crops on roadsides and railroad embankments.

The current crackdown comes when this southern African country needs to import 1,2 million metric tons of food to avoid famine. Years of drought, combined with the seizure of thousands of white-owned farms for redistribution to black Zimbabweans, have slashed agricultural production.

Many poor families depend on their vegetable patches for food and a tiny income at a time of 144 percent inflation and 80 percent unemployment.

Many of the capital’s two million residents till any vacant ground they can find for an annual production of 50 000 metric tons of corn—over a fifth of their total food requirements—according to farming expert Richard Winkfield.

The Reverend Oskar Wermter, former secretary to the Zimbabwe Roman Catholic Bishop’s conference and a parish priest in one of the poorest downtown areas, called the crackdown against these plots “insane and evil”.

“They are sleeping in the open air—tiny children and people dying of Aids—and people you thought still had some decency are defending this crime against humanity,” said Wermter. “It is a watershed, it is the beginning of the end, but the end will be terrible.”

Charlie Hewat, executive director of Environment Africa, said controlled urban agriculture was essential for the poor throughout the developing world’s cities. There were, however, no legal allotments in Harare.

The main opposition Movement for Democratic Change has accused the 81-year-old Mugabe of imitating Cambodia’s former Pol Pot regime by driving pro-MDC urban voters back to rural areas for “re-education.”

It alleges food access is being used as a weapon of political reprisal following March 31 parliamentary elections won by Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front.

Mugabe expressed surprise at the “misplaced hue and cry over Operation Murambatsvina” in a recent telephone conversation with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, presidential spokeseperson George Charamba told The Herald newspaper.

Mugabe agreed in the phone call to let Anna Tibaijuka, Tanzanian head of the United Nations Habitat agency, come as Annan’s envoy to asses the impact of Operation Murambatsvina, Charamba confirmed.

On Sunday, police spokeseperson Whisper Bondayi said the demolition campaign was also being extended to wealthier suburbs. He said some residents had illegally converted their homes into offices and workshops.

No demolitions have been reported in such neighborhoods. Wealthy home owners have recourse to judges and lawyers—unlike the poor who rush to salvage what possessions they can before their homes are burned or bulldozed.

However, police have arrested 335 prostitutes and 161 illegal aliens—mostly “fugitives from justice in their own countries”—in raids on lodges and apartments near downtown Harare, Bondayi told Tuesday’s edition of The Herald.

King Bisquick Power Hour

2005-06-25 00:04 | User Profile

Here'e another way of putting it: Mugabe is an azzhole. Like Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, were all azzholes.

Angeleyes

2005-06-25 00:17 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Blond Knight] Harare—Zimbabwe police have extended a demolition campaign targeting the homes and livelihoods of the urban poor to the vegetable gardens they rely on for food, saying the crops planted on vacant lots are damaging the environment. Herald.[/QUOTE] And Mr Mugabe is still puzzling out how his people will all be fed. Hmmmmmmmmm.

Texas Dissident

2005-08-18 17:58 | User Profile

[url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4163700.stm]Zimbabwe to speed up land seizure[/url]

...The government blames food shortages on drought and economic sabotage by Western countries, led by the UK, opposed to land reform...

Ponce

2005-08-18 18:31 | User Profile

I was on "vacation" in Rhode back in 76 and while it was not heaven oh Earth it was 500% better and what it is now.