60 years after the UN Convention - Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation

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230 development dialogue december 2008 – revisiting the heart of darkness speech on May 25, Africa Day, the organisation seemed paralysed and without a plan to react even to such gross provocation of their support base. The only group which protested visibly were the brave women of WOZA (Women of Zimbabwe Arise) whose demonstration march in Bulawayo on June 18, World Refugee Day, demanded an end to Murambatsvina. They called themselves ‘refugees with no refuge’, ‘living like birds in the trees’. 13 The women were quickly arrested, and later remanded in custody. Answering a charge of obstructing traffi c at a trial a few weeks later, they were all acquitted, with the imaginative comment by the magistrate that people in motion cannot block traffi c. International community The history of the past century is laden with governments’ eff orts to avoid their responsibilities under international law. Generally this begins with a reluctance to admit that atrocities have occurred. But in 2005, the international community heard and believed and responded to the call from Zimbabwe. The secretary-general of the United Nations sent a respected special envoy, Anna Tibaijuka, to investigate the abuses. She arrived in Zimbabwe a bare six weeks after the beginning of the operation – unfortunately, however, after most of the destruction had already taken place. She avoided the government’s attempt to control her movements and whom she spoke to and she engaged with all groups, including churches, NGOs, civil society and victims themselves. Within a very short time she produced a comprehensive report, condemning the government’s actions and calling on it to stop, and to accept international assistance for the victims. Even the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights sent a special rapporteur to investigate the abuses, but he was prevented from carrying out his work by the government, and eventually left Zimbabwe without carrying out his mandate. International organisations, including UN agencies, attempted to respond to the report’s call for humanitarian assistance to the victims, but were themselves prevented from doing much. They were kept away from the infamous detention camps where displaced people were being held, and were not allowed to distribute food or medicines. When the UN produced a model temporary shelter which they hoped to build in numbers for the displaced, the design was roughly rejected by the government as ‘substandard’, and the president himself ridiculed tents, saying ‘we are not tents people’(Solidarity Peace 13 These descriptive phrases appeared on a fl ier distributed by WOZA members during the demonstration.
mass violence in zimbabwe 2005 – murambatsvina 231 Trust 2006: 69). The UN then went into appeasement mode, trying to negotiate the right to bring assistance. No move was taken by any government to initiate international legal mechanisms to punish or even censure the Zimbabwean government for gross violations of its commitments under international law. Disappointing, as usual, was the response of African governments. Instead of condemning the massive rights abuses, most kept quiet, while some even praised Zimbabwe for achieving slum clearance. Sadly, this approach has come to be expected from the governments of Zimbabwe’s neighbours, who appear secretly excited by the brazenness of the Zimbabwean government’s crimes. They abrogate their moral and legal obligations under international and regional human rights instruments, possibly because they want to shelter themselves from censure for their own crimes. Reports by UN envoys sometimes have a sobering eff ect on the perpetrators of injustice, but generally are not suffi cient to change behaviour. Western governments had already imposed targeted sanctions on the Zimbabwean government and ZANU-PF individuals and had discontinued most government-to-government aid programmes, so there were few more actions open to them which might have changed the situation. They were reduced to pleading to be allowed to provide aid to the victims. And even here they faltered, in the face of government insistence that no aid was needed. The Zimbabwean government Two responses need to be noted: the government’s attempts to pass off the mass violence as urban renewal, and its consistent eff orts to prevent assistance reaching the displaced victims. Throughout, the government and all its members were defi ant in their determination to carry on with the destruction in spite of criticism. In response to the initial outcry, it produced all sorts of excuses, and then quickly invented a plan to claim that it was building houses for the displaced people through a programme named Operation Garikayi/Hlalani Guhle (live well). Ironically, this contradicted directly the instruction for people to return to their rural homes. When Mrs Tibaijuka arrived in early July, the government was diligent in taking her to sites where signs of construction were hastily arranged. A pretence of building was displayed, with trillions of dollars being allegedly allocated, but no one was surprised when, more than a year later, very few houses had been constructed in urban centres
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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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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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60 years after the UN Convention - Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation

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