POLITICS-ZIMBABWE: Churches to the Rescue

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

JOHANNESBURG, Aug 3 2005 (IPS) - South African churches sent relief aid to Zimbabwe this week to help more than 700,000 people affected by the country’s urban clean-up campaign – Operation Murambatsvina, a Shona term meaning “drive out trash”.

The supplies include 4,500 blankets and 37 tonnes of maize, beans and oil. “We haven’t received information from Zimbabwe whether the aid has arrived yet,” a spokesperson for the South African Council of Churches (SACC) told IPS Tuesday. “But the convoy is on its way to help the people displaced in Zimbabwe.”

In a damning report about Murambatsvina, Anna Tibaijuka – executive director of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme – said it had begun with little or no warning (Tibaijuka visited Zimbabwe to look into the effects of the campaign at the request of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan). The urban initiative, also referred to as Operation Restore Order, got underway in May.

“It started in the Zimbabwean capital, Harare, and rapidly evolved into a nationwide demolition and eviction campaign carried out by the police and the army. Popularly referred to as ‘Operation Tsunami’ because of its speed and ferocity, it resulted in the destruction of homes, business premises and vending sites,” the envoy noted in her report, issued last month.

“Some 700,000 people in cities across the country have lost either their homes, their source of livelihood, or both. Indirectly, a further 2.4 million people have been affected in varying degrees,” she added. “Hundreds of thousands of women, men and children were made homeless, without access to food, water and sanitation, or health care.”

Zimbabwean officials said the operation was launched to rid cities of illegal settlements and crime.

At a news conference held in the South African financial centre of Johannesburg Monday, SACC Secretary General Molefe Tsele appealed for additional funds to address the crisis that had been created by Operation Murambatsvina. “Everybody should join the churches in building the campaign and making it a beacon of hope to our neighbours in Zimbabwe,” he said.

Methodist Bishop Ivan Abrahams said more supplies would be sent to Zimbabwe on Aug. 18. “It will be with the assistance of South Africa’s government: they are offering logistical support. They will be using army trucks,” he told IPS Tuesday.

So far, the churches have raised about 76,000 dollars for victims of the clean up. They have also opened a bank account in South Africa where people can make contributions to the Zimbabwean relief initiative.

“There has been a very good response from the churches. All the churches have partners in the United Kingdom or Germany which also say they would like to participate,” Abrahams noted.

The emergency supplies will be distributed by the Zimbabwe Council of Churches at church halls and resettlement camps in the cities most affected by Operation Restore Order: Harare, Bulawayo and Mutare. South Africa’s embassy in Harare will help ensure that aid reaches the people for whom it is intended.

This comes as civil society groups and opposition parties accuse the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front, in power since 1980, of restricting food aid to its supporters. Government has denied the allegations.

Some 2.9 million people, including an estimated 36 percent of Zimbabwe’s rural population, will require food aid this year, according to a joint report by U.N. agencies and the 13-nation Southern African Development Community released in June.

Authorities have announced a plan to import 1.2 million tonnes of maize to address the shortages, attributed by certain analysts to drought and the reduced production brought about by farm seizures. However, the United Nations World Food Programme said it had nonetheless developed contingency plans to assist up to four million people in Zimbabwe during the year ahead.

In 2000, veterans of Zimbabwe’s 1970s war of independence and government militants began occupying white-owned farms, apparently to protest against continued racial imbalances in land ownership that were inherited from the colonial era. While officials initially portrayed the farm seizures as a spontaneous gesture by militants, government critics have alleged that the state orchestrated the invasions in order to garner support in the 2000 parliamentary elections.

Zimbabwean authorities have accused the churches and various non- governmental organisations of exaggerating the damage caused by Operation Murambatsvina.

But Bishop Abrahams, who led a delegation of South African church leaders to Zimbabwe last week, said clerics were simply motivated by concern about events in the country.

“We are responding to what we have seen, and we are responding to the request of the Zimbabwe Council of Churches, the Evangelical Fellowship and the Catholic Bishops’ Conference. We are not imposing ourselves on Zimbabwe,” he observed.

According to Tibaijuka, the effects of the urban campaign are being felt well beyond the loss of housing and employment.

“Education for thousands of school age children has been disrupted. Many of the sick, including those with HIV and AIDS, no longer have access to care,” she said in her report.

“The vast majority of those directly and indirectly affected are the poor and disadvantaged segments of the population. They are, today, deeper in poverty, deprivation and destitution, and have been rendered more vulnerable,” Tibaijuka added.