AN operation spearheaded by the government for the demolition of informal tuckshops and vending stalls has brought devastation to Harare’s urban poor, plunging entire families into untold poverty.
The Zimbabwe Republic Police was deployed in full force, accompanied by municipal police and earthmoving equipment. Log cabins housing grocery retailers, hardware dealers and market stalls belonging to fruit and vegetable sellers were destroyed with ruthless efficiency as the rulers of the land imposed their will.
Roadside tuckshops resembled a war zone after the bulldozers flattened everything in their path. The NewsHawks witnessed first hand the sheer scale of the devastation along Simon Mazorodze Road, particularly in the bustling Mbudzi Roundabout area and later in Parktown suburb where informal traders were sent scurrying for cover.
Distraught vendors sobbed uncontrollably while others were too numbed by shock to come to terms with the brutal destruction of livelihoods they were witnessing. Worried about finding their next meal in an economy that has dished out endless misery, they said their world had literally come crushing down.
The demolition spectacle has hit hard the vulnerable members of Harare’s impoverished high-density suburbs. There are child vendors, widows, unemployed youths and the disabled–all struggling to eke out a living on the unforgiving streets.
The impact of the social dislocation directly arising from the government’s mindless war on informal traders will have far-reaching implications.
There are echoes of 2005 when the government unleashed a massive war on the urban poor, destroying homes and sources of livelihood.
Back then, the United Nations dispatched a fact-finding team to assess the carnage. The report stunned the world, but even the UN officials did not sufficiently capture the utter devastation.
What happened in 2005 was a precursor to the country’s descent into the gutter. Hyperinflation, extreme poverty, escalating political repression and a suffocating sense of hopelessness plunged the nation into the depths of hell.
From a promising developing nation, Zimbabwe had now become a man-made disaster zone, a fully fledged failed state.
Cornered by its own catastrophic policies and actions, the Zanu PF government resorted to default mode: state terror, authoritarian kleptocracy and unmitigated murder. By the time the bloody 2008 general elections were held, the suffering in Zimbabwe had surpassed that of war-torn countries.
Zanu PF never learns. It is incapable of reform. How can a government demolish the only source of livelihood in poverty-stricken urban communities? According to a new World Bank report whose findings we publish elsewhere in these pages today, extreme poverty in this country has doubled, with almost half the entire population living in penury.
The Covid-19 pandemic has pulverised an already shattered economy. In the middle of a socio-economic emergency, the heartless government wages a cruel war on informal traders. It is wrong and shameful.
