Reports that the government is convening a meeting this week to discuss forms of assistance to be rendered to the victims of Mazowe evictions typify the government’s negative attitude towards human rights.
NewsDay Editorial
Like in the Mazowe case, we have seen, over the years, how the government either directly abuses human rights or facilitates such actions, only to shed crocodile tears afterwards.
People were evicted from Spelenken Farm in Mazowe in broad daylight with the government’s blessings.
The government’s involvement cannot be disputed because the evictions were enforced by the country’s police force. What boggles the mind is that the government had allowed these people to settle on the farm and to carry out agricultural activities, only to boot them out just before harvest.
This not only renders them homeless, but exposes them to starvation too.
This is reminiscent of Operation Murambatsvina in 2005 when the government destroyed people’s homes in urban areas. The United Nations estimates that this madness called Murambatsvina affected 2,4 million people nationwide. In typical Zimbabwe government fashion, crocodile tears were shed in the form of a few matchbox type of houses that were hardly inhabitable and too few to make any sense.
It is amazing that these human rights abuses are perpetrated by a Zanu PF government that purports to have people at heart. What is more amazing is the government’s feeble attempt, as in the two cases cited above, to bolt the stable door after the horse has bolted.
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As if these actions are not enough, the government is planning another Murambatsvina-type of operation where it has vowed to destroy about 4 000 houses built illegally in Chitungwiza. As usual, politicians in government were part of the scam, raking in thousands of dollars through the illegal sale of stands.
And the government was watching while the horse was bolting out as it were. Now they are going in for the kill—destruction of people’s homes. What kind of government is this? It should be one of its kind in the universe that takes sadistic pleasure in making its people homeless.
To display its sadistic nature, first it encourages people to build for political expediency, and then it comes in to destroy what has been built using taxpayers’ money. And then it sheds crocodile tears, a pattern that has become familiar with the hapless population.
This is the epitome of cruelty and human rights abuse. The government, instead of providing shelter for its people, destroys the little that those very same people build through their own sweat. Government should stop destroying people’s homes. Such actions are so ghastly they make the devil himself look like a saint.
