Opinion piece by Elinor Sisulu

Johannesburg Nov 2 (IPS) - One of the many political jokes doing the rounds in Zimbabwe is about Tony Blair, George Bush and Robert Mugabe dying and going to hell. The devil allows each one of them one phone call but at a cost. Bush is charged 200 dollars for his call to Washington. Tony Blair’s call to London sets him back by 100 pounds.

Mugabe is pleasantly surprised to discover that his call to Harare costs him a few cents. Curiosity gets the better of him and he asks why the call to Harare is so cheap. The devil responds promptly: ‘‘Because yours is a local call.’’

Some Zimbabweans resort to humour to survive their harsh reality. Others find the jokes too close to the bone to laugh. ‘‘It is not a joke, it is the truth,’’ says Robert Chirombo *, “I do not think even hell can be worse than life under this government, especially after the tsunami.”

The ‘‘tsunami’’ that Robert is referring to is not the Asian one but the government blitz dubbed Operation Murambatsvina or ‘‘Remove the Filth’’. Between May and July 2005, the operation destroyed the homes and businesses of over 700,000 people in cities across Zimbabwe.

United Nation (UN) Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s special envoy, Anna Tibaijuka, called it a ‘‘tragedy of catastrophic proportions’’. Her report confirmed that over 2.4 million Zimbabweans were affected.

Movement for Democratic Change supporters Robert and Rudo Chirombo* and their two children lived in a room in Robert’s brother’s backyard. Robert used a second room as a small carpentry workshop. Both rooms were bulldozed by soldiers and police during the so-called clean-up.

One year later the Chirombo family continues to experience the traumatic effects. The large-scale destruction caused a massive shortage of accommodation. Unable to secure alternative accommodation, Robert and his family have had to crowd into his brother’s home. Without the modest income from his carpentry business, Robert can no longer pay rent to his brother, a situation that does not augur well for family harmony.

Government promises of rebuilding houses under so-called Operation Garikai have not materialized. Just a tiny fraction of affected families, mostly with ruling party connections, have been provided with accommodation. Government has obstructed relief efforts in numerous ways, to the point of rejecting a UN offer of tents for the homeless.

Studies carried out by Action Aid and other nongovernmental organisations have detailed the reverberating impact of these actions on poor and marginalized communities. Families have been moved from pillar to post. In some cases, infants have died in the process.

Zimbabweans have fled to neighbouring countries whose governments do not acknowledge the magnitude of the influx. It is the most materially deprived and marginalized communities in South African, Botswana, Zambia and Mozambique that have had to absorb the influx of Zimbabwean refugees.

Like many Zimbabweans, Robert is convinced that Operation Murambatsvina was the government’s way of punishing the urban population for voting for the opposition MDC in the parliamentary elections of 31 March 2005. ‘‘Which government will turn on its people just two months after supposedly winning a two-thirds majority in an election? It does not make sense. They know who the majority of us voted for and we are now paying the price.’’

It is indeed astounding how any sane observer could have declared the March 2005 election a legitimate expression of the will of the Zimbabwean people. In the run-up to the poll, the Zimbabwean government made a few cosmetic reforms to provide a semblance of compliance with the Southern African Development Community’s (SADC) Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections.

However, the election was as flawed and contentious as the 2000 and 2002 elections. If anything, the electoral environment had deteriorated since 2002 with the enactment of legislation such as the Public Order and Security Act (POSA), the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) and the Broadcasting Services Act.

In combination, these pieces of legislation deny the Zimbabwean electorate the basic freedoms of assembly, speech and association. The voters’ roll was manipulated and while levels of violence may have been lower than they were in the previous elections, members of the MDC continued to suffer harassment and physical abuse. Moreover, the independence of the judiciary has been severely compromised as a result of state harassment.

For Rudo Chirombo, the 2005 elections brought back horrific memories of how she was sexually assaulted during an earlier election campaign. Several police officers arrived at her home while Robert was out campaigning for the MDC. They stripped her naked and took turns in shoving a baton up her vagina. They then beat her within an inch of her life. This took place in front of her children. They looted the house and left.

Afterwards, the Chirombos’ landlord turned them out of the house. They fled the city where they had lived for some time, only returning when they felt secure enough to move into Robert’s brother’s backyard.

Sadly, the experience of the Chirombos was not uncommon in the nine by-elections and the 2002 presidential elections that Zimbabweans had to endure since 2000. These polls were characterized by intimidation of voters through widespread and systematic state-sponsored violence. The perpetrators were the so-called war veterans and the dreaded youth militia, the police and the army.

Citizens were disenfranchised through various means, such as the confiscation of identity documents. A ruthless propaganda campaign legitimized violence against opposition voices on the grounds that they were ‘‘puppets of the West’’. All of these tactics have made nonsense of claims that the elections were free and fair.

The Mugabe regime’s ruthless efficiency in suppressing dissent and controlling its sullen and restless citizenry is matched only by its economic ineptitude. Gripped by a series of interlocking crises since 2000, Zimbabwe today has the unenviable distinction of having the fastest shrinking economy in the world, the highest rate of inflation (over 1000 percent), and one of the highest rates of unemployment (80 percent).

According to the World Health Organisation, life expectancy in Zimbabwe is now 34 years for women and 37 years for men. The dramatic increase in mortality rates is the result of a combination of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and a collapsing health system due to the crisis in governance. The adult prevalence rate of HIV/AIDS is 20 percent.

Today, Zimbabweans are poorer than they were 50 years ago. An economic crisis of such staggering proportions is unusual outside a war situation. It has been characterised by de-industrialisation, mass unemployment and chaotically administered and incomplete land reform which has caused low food production and widespread starvation.

The rampant inflation has squeezed the livelihoods of the poor and led to a collapse in social, health and education services. Access to basic services such as water and electricity has been limited.

Tragically, the response of regional governments to the catastrophic situation has, at best, been lukewarm and, at worst, supportive of the Mugabe regime. There was no condemnation of Operation Murambatsvina by any of the governments in the region, despite the fact that the Zimbabwean government’s actions constitute a negation of each of the eight Millennium Development Goals.

Operation Murambatsvina increased poverty and hunger and disrupted the education of over 300,000 children. Among those rendered homeless and without access to food, water, sanitation or health care were infants, the elderly and the infirm. The access to treatment of those with HIV/AIDS was badly disrupted.

The environmental damage of the exercise was enormous. Far from being a clean-up operation, Zimbabwean cities are dirtier than ever before. There is no evidence that African ministers of housing, who have met several times since Operation Murambatsvina, have deliberated on the issue in any serious way.

Zimbabwe was not sanctioned by the African Union (AU) when the government refused to acknowledge AU emissary Bahame Tom Nyanduga, special rapporteur responsible for refugees, asylum seekers and internally displaced persons, when he visited Zimbabwe in July 2005 on a fact-finding mission.

African governments have ignored the reports and statements of the African Commission for Human and Peoples’ Rights on Zimbabwe. In 2005, when the Zimbabwean government refused to allow the SADC Parliamentary Forum to observe the parliamentary elections, not one SADC government protested.

The Zimbabwean government has literally got away with murder. It will continue to do so as long as African governments lack the political will to fully invoke instruments such as the peer review mechanism of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).

Ultimately, in the absence of concerted political pressure on Zimbabwe, achievement of the Millennium Development Goals will be an ever distant dream. For ordinary Zimbabweans like the Chirombo family, the lofty sounding MDGs are another bad joke.

*Pseudonyms have been used to protect identities

Elinor Sisulu, a writer and human rights activist, works as media and advocacy manager of Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition's South Africa office