Just when you think Mugabe's Zimbabwe can't get any more insane, he does something that makes you know that yes, it can.
The homes of some 200,000 Zimbabwean city dwellers have been demolished in the past three weeks, according to the United Nations.
Police have been moving from area to area, in some cases forcing people to knock down their own homes. In others, they have turned up with bulldozers to demolish structures which they say have been built illegally.
"We were busking, enjoying the winter sun when we heard trucks and bulldozers roll in. There was pandemonium as we rushed to salvage the little we could," one resident of the capital, Harare told the BBC News website. "In no time the cottage I had called home for three years was gone. Then it dawned on me that I was now homeless, you try and pinch yourself and wake up but this was no dream. My life had been shattered before my very own eyes."
Worshippers at a Harare mosque have even been made to destroy it, says opposition MP Trudy Stevenson.
Thousands of desperate Zimbabweans are living on the streets, others have gone back to their rural homes, while some have managed to squeeze into parts of the cities not yet touched by what some are calling the "tsunami". President Robert Mugabe said "Operation Murambatsvina [Drive out rubbish]" was needed to "restore sanity" to Zimbabwe's cities, which he said had become overrun with criminals.
His critics say it is no coincidence that opposition to his rule is strongest in urban areas - and that in March the opposition Movement of Democratic Change (MDC) won almost all urban seats for a second election in a row....
So creating 200,000 homeless people is going to drive down crime. What an ... interesting view of urban sociology that would be, if it had anything to do with why he's demolishing those homes. It seems to have more to do with the desire to bring the country under tighter control -- he is, so it seems, attacking some who thought they were his allies, as well as many who knew they were his enemies.
Posted by iain at June 17, 2005 04:53 PM
