60 years after the UN Convention - Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation

222 development dialogue december 2008 – revisiting the heart of darkness
Many of those who had nowhere to go were rounded up by police
and dumped in holding detention centres; these were alleged to be
temporary, but a year and a half later still held several thousand, in the
most appalling of conditions.
A year later, a large proportion of those dumped in rural areas were
back in town. They found that they were rejected by the communities
to which they were sent, had no resources to start again, no income,
and often were deliberately denied drought relief. Huge numbers
of the displaced within towns live in much more crowded and
unsanitary conditions than they did before, and some remain in the
squalid holding camps which resemble prisons. Informal trade continues
on a reduced scale, with slightly more regulation than before,
but many dodge law enforcement on a daily basis, losing their goods
to confi scation and theft by the police and surviving at a much lower
level than they did before (Solidarity Peace Trust 2006: 19-25).
It is clear that the end result of this man-made disaster is equivalent
to the result of a natural disaster on a mammoth scale: homelessness,
destitution, disease, illiteracy and, above all, the creation of extreme
poverty in a large number of families which were already poor. Many
no longer cope and succumb to exposure, disease and malnutrition.
While some remained leading rural lives in the communal areas, and
others joined the multitudes of illegal gold diggers or migrants to
South Africa, the vast majority remained in or returned to an urban
environment, clinging to a precarious existence. They are the products
of a government programme of deliberate destruction.
Why the destruction?
Reasons stated by government
The government made no attempt to announce or explain this programme
before it began. Once it had started, and a cry of protest arose
from civil society organisations, the government produced a series of
justifi cations. It claimed that the businesses and houses were illegal and
order must be restored; it claimed that the informal settlements and fl ea
markets were havens for criminals, especially illegal foreign currency
dealers; it wanted to put the economy back on track by wiping out the
currency black market; there were too many people living in the city
slums, and these must return to their rural homes. 10 They never attempted
to explain or justify the ambush style, speed and brutality of
10 For the text of the speech by the chairperson of the Harare Commission at the launch
of the operation see Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum (2005a: 6-7) or Solidarity
Peace Trust (2005a: 42).