A Fractured Nation: Operation Murambatsvina – five years on

In Bulawayo’s informal settlement of Killarney, some families have been evicted again, in July 2010. These children contemplate an uncertain future.

In May 2005, the Zimbabwean government embarked on a massive, highly systematic programme of demolitions of all informal housing in urban and peri-urban areas across Zimbabwe. Combined with a total clampdown on the informal trading sector, including the destruction of official vending areas and confiscation of all wares, Operation Murambatsvina (OM), or “Drive out the Filth” caused direct havoc in the lives of millions. The sheer scale and thoroughness of OM set it apart from previous demolitions, not just in Zimbabwe, but in Africa.

1. 2005: immediate losses of dwellings and livelihoods

Three million people countrywide directly and indirectly suffered, as a result of the demolitions; an estimated 100,000 vendors were arrested – many of them legally licensed and selling from legal vendors’ markets; 560,000 people lost their shelter countrywide, with some small centres losing as much as 60% of their housing. A further 2,4 million lost markets for their goods, and/or remittances from the urban areas. Most of the demolished shelters were of good quality with access to electricity, water and sewerage, and many had been legitimated by virtue of standing for decades. The illegality of the government’s actions, which were in violation of the nation’s own laws with respect to evictions, as well as in violation of international statutes and protocols, has been noted in our previous reports on OM, as well as by other commentators.

2. 2010: impact of OM

Five years on, what observations can be made regarding the causes and impact of OM, bearing in mind its context in the multi-layered, cataclysmic decline of Zimbabwe, which began in the 1990s? The massive internal displacement of people that resulted from OM in 2005, has been followed by further economic, humanitarian and political crises that have created seemingly impossible conditions...Read more

What options for Zimbabwe?

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There is a general consensus that the Global Political Agreement (GPA), signed in September 2008 and initiated in February 2009, has not yet lived up to expectations, and has been seriously stalled in the implementation of some of its key components. There are clearly key blockages in the process that are locked into a number of factors, namely Zanu PF’s determination to remain in power at any cost, the MDC’s rightful claim to demand the opening up of democratic spaces promised in the GPA, the limitations of SADC’s capacity to respond to the Zimbabwe crisis, and ambiguities around the Western response of limited economic engagement with the Inclusive Government and continued implementations of targeted sanctions against the Mugabe regime. With fierce positions emerging around this strategic challenge the severe problems facing the GPA place an enormous responsibility on all the key players involved in the Zimbabwe debate, to find a way forward in the current impasse. The central purpose of the Briefing is to consider the options open to the central protagonists in this process, within the context of the balance of power and relations of force within the country and the region, while also contextualising the international dimension.

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