60 years after the UN Convention - Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation

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226 development dialogue december 2008 – revisiting the heart of darkness Ultimately, all of the above explanations will play a part in creating understanding of the motives for the operation, which emerges as some kind of grand design to solve in a single blow all political and economic problems facing ZANU-PF. Characteristics of Murambatsvina Firstly, it was described as an ‘operation’, a term normally used for military actions, but one being used frequently by the Zimbabwean government to describe its policies, as the bureaucracy becomes more militarised. Since May 2005 there has been Operation Garkayi/ Hlalani Kuhle, Operation Taguta, Operation Sunrise and Operation Chikorokoza/Chapera. Operation Murambatsvina was announced at 12:00 noon on May 19, in a public speech, and before dark, much of the informal trade in the city centre of Harare had been destroyed. It was otherwise unannounced, and was more in the nature of an ambush, carried out with calculated violence and brutality. It involved coordination of various units of law enforcement including regular police, riot police, municipal police and some army units. Not only did it destroy the property of individuals, it also wasted government resources, particularly in the form of fuel to transport the policemen and bulldozers for demolition – this at a time of shortage of fuel for all purposes. The offi cers on the ground who carried out the demolitions were eff ective instruments of the policy, obedient to the last, even those (and there were many, although this has not been researched) who saw that it was both illegal and evil. Secondly, the operation was blatantly illegal, violating rights guaranteed in the national constitution: particularly the right to freedom from arbitrary deprivation of property, and from arbitrary arrest, but also the right to freedom of movement, the right to protection of the law and liberty of the person. It failed to recognise rights granted individuals when they paid licence fees and rentals for recognised vending points. It ignored legislation providing for orderly processes of dealing with illegally built structures, and openly defi ed court interdicts prohibiting the demolition of certain structures. Some people were unlawfully arrested and forced to pay fi nes for activities that were legal. A government that said it wanted to eradicate criminal activity, and had a police force trained to identify and apprehend suspects, instead punished everyone carrying on activities in a specifi c area, without bothering to fi nd out whether or not they were acting legally. Many vendors who displayed licences and receipts from local authorities had them ripped up.
mass violence in zimbabwe 2005 – murambatsvina 227 Thirdly, the language used by some politicians and members of the uniformed services was the language of genocide. The president himself had during a previous election campaign referred to the inhabitants of Mbare, the oldest high-density suburb in Harare, as ‘totemless’, thus excluding them from the Zimbabwean cultural community. The minister for state security, Didymus Mutasa, had two years earlier shocked Zimbabweans by saying publicly that we only need a population of 6 million – we can do without the other 6 million. Some people felt the two were referring to Malawians and Mozambicans who have been absorbed into the population over the past century, but this has not been explicitly stated, and hundreds of thousands of citizens of purely Zimbabwean ancestry have also been victims. The commissioner of police referred to the Zimbabweans whose houses were being destroyed as ‘refuse’, even ‘maggots’(Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum 2005a: 23). This is the language used by those who turn their enemies into ‘others’, non-humans; in Rwanda, for example the genocidaires labelled those to be killed ‘cockroaches’. People described in this way are being deliberately dehumanised so that they then do not need to be treated as human beings. Fourthly, the victims were blamed. They were in the way, committing crimes, sabotaging the economy and the orderly appearance of the towns. The poor were blamed for being poor, for engaging in informal trade and living in unregulated settlements. The implication was that they should have done something diff erently. Yet who other than the government was to blame for the deteriorating economic environment, the lack of adequate housing, the displacement of farmworkers, the retreat into the informal economy of so many former employees and school leavers? Even if the economic problems were not entirely of its own making, the government, instead of looking for rational solutions, turned round and blamed the victims for their situation and punished them viciously and violently. Fifthly, the action was initiated, not by the government making a decision as government, but by a small group within the government and the security apparatus. The specifi c individuals responsible may not be known, but it is clear that many government ministers and members of the Politburo were taken unawares. But rather than trying to put a brake on the process, they quickly jumped on the bandwagon. While refusing to take responsibility themselves, they picked up the justifi cations given by the government and latched onto to the urban renewal and crime-fi ghting explanation. Although some ZANU-PF offi cials apparently voiced their concern privately, the lone public voice of complaint was that of a backbench parliamentar-
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no. 50 | december 2008 Revisiting t
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Revisiting the heart of darkness -
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Acknowledgements The larger part of
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Dennis Brutus, born 1924 in then Rh
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8 development dialogue december 200
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ehind most mass violence lurk econo
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Is there a south perspective on gen
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is there a south perspective on gen
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The Voksenåsen Statement Genocides
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This Development Dialogue is publis
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