Mugabe defends township 'clean-up campaign'
A two-day general strike got off to a slow start today with most Zimbabweans seemingly heeding police warnings not to participate in the protest against the forced removal of tens of thousands of informal traders and shack dwellers from city streets.
In an address to parliament, President Robert Mugabe defended the three-week blitz as “a vigorous clean-up campaign to restore sanity” in urban areas. The opposition has said it is a strike on its urban support base.
“The current chaotic state of affairs where (small and medium enterprises) operated … in unregulated and crime-ridden areas could not have been tolerated for much longer,” Mugabe told legislators at the opening of Parliament.
Opposition politicians boycotted the session in protest, saying police continued to round up residents and pile them into trucks in at least one Harare township.
Police using torches, sledgehammers and bulldozers have burned down homes and kiosks in shantytowns around the country since launching the campaign dubbed Operation Murambatsvina, or “drive out trash”, last month.
A broad alliance of civic groups, churches, opposition parties and trade unions called the strike for today and tomorrow to protest the drive, which UN officials say has left at least 200,000 urban poor homeless. More than 30,000 people have been arrested, according to police.
Many roads were quieter than usual, but banks, schools, shops and most other businesses were open in the capital, Harare, and other major centres.
Lovemore Madhuku, a spokesman for the recently formed Broad Alliance, which organised the strike, blamed the poor participation on a climate of fear.
“If police can demolish your home, they can come to your room and demand why you are still in bed and have not gone to work,” he said.
Police had warned for days they would “deal ruthlessly” with anyone participating in the strike.
Paramilitary officers in riot gear deployed in Harare, sealing off a large part of downtown ahead of Mugabe’s speech and causing major traffic jams.
The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions said three of its members were arrested at their homes before dawn today for allegedly organising the strike in the second city of Bulawayo. But there were no reports of violence.
Mugabe’s government says its campaign is aimed at cleaning up cities and cracking down on black market traders it accuses of sabotaging the economy, marked by five years of unprecedented decline.
However, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change says the crackdown is meant to punish its supporters among the urban poor.
It alleges the government is trying to force its supporters back to ruling-party dominated rural areas, where they can be more tightly controlled.
“A grave crime has been committed against poor and helpless people,” six Roman Catholic bishops said in a statement. “We warn the perpetrators … history will hold you individually accountable.”
The Protestant Evangelical Christian Fellowship also condemned the crackdown, saying police were “wantonly destroying property”.
Despite the protests, police continued to drive out residents of at least one Harare township.
“Police are now in Hatcliffe … rounding everyone up and piling them onto lorries. Their belongings are being put on separate lorries, so they fear they will lose everything,” opposition politician Trudy Stevenson said.
“They are not being told where they are being taken, but they have the impression it is far away and that they might be kept in a holding camp under guard.”
An opposition statement urged Zimbabweans to participate in the strike to protest the actions of “this criminal regime”.
Economists, however, said it would be difficult to make a general strike effective because only about 800,000 of Zimbabwe’s 12 million people have formal sector jobs.
Mugabe, who was escorted to Parliament by a colonial-style cavalcade, lashed out at foreign critics of his human rights record and the fairness of the March 31 election, of which his Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front was declared winner.
He called the complaints a “smoke screen for their neo-colonialist intentions”.
Mugabe, who has been in power since independence from Britain in 1980, vowed to complete the takeover of 5,000 white-owned farms for redistribution to black Zimbabweans despite “residual problems”, including international investment treaties protecting some properties.
Sounding confused at times and stumbling over his words, the 81-year-old leader also promised tough new laws to fight corruption and electronic crime, including the “dissemination of offensive material”. He did not elaborate.
