Clean up to affect traders

By Wongai Zhangazha

Zimbabwe’s capital Harare has said it would go ahead with the clean up exercise on illegal settlements and informal markets around the city, defying calls by Amnesty International for the immediate stop of any pending mass evictions from informal settlements or markets in Harare.

The informal sector has contributed enormously to Zimbabwe's struggling economy in the form of jobs and disposable incomes in a country where unemployment is 94 percent. 

Harare Mayor Muchadei Masunda recently at a press briefing said the council was going to go ahead with the clean up exercise but was doing it so according to the city bylaws.

Masunda said: “We are in touch with local representatives of Amnesty International to discuss the concerns that they have raised. There are some bylaws that have not been enforced at the moment especially those with impact on health issues. We are not just going to apply the bylaws with impunity. All those that are found to display anti-social behaviour will be dealt with properly.”

Amnesty International in a statement said it was against the “forcible” evictions of an estimated 200 people from an informal settlement in the suburb of Gunhill and thousands of informal traders across Harare, who had not been given adequate notice or had any consultation and no guarantee that authorities would provide an effective solution for the victims.

“Most of the targeted people were victims of the 2005 mass forced evictions that left about 700,000 people without homes or livelihood or both. Four years, on the authorities now want to forcibly re-evict some of these people without being given adequate notice or any consultation or due process,” reads the statement.

Amnesty International wants the council to give adequate and reasonable notice for affected people prior to any eviction and ensure that no one is rendered homeless or vulnerable to the violation of other human rights as a consequence of eviction.

“Where those affected are unable to provide for themselves, the council must take all appropriate measures, to the maximum of its available resources, to ensure that adequate alternative housing, resettlement or access to productive land, as the case may be, is available.”

However Masunda said the council was dealing with a situation that was unacceptable and the targeted people were posing a health hazard and violating city by-laws.

He said circumstances that gave rise to all these issues are to do with what has been happening at stalls at Mupedzanhamo, Machipisa and other markets around the city.

Masunda said some of the perpetrators of this chaos are politically well-placed people who were making money at these stalls at the expense of genuinely needy people whom the stalls were specifically made for.

“There are individuals connected with the previous commissions running the city and they are not eligible to run these stalls. In August last year on a familiarisation tour at Machipisa hardware and other areas I was shocked that of the 62 stall holders at Machipisa, close to 800 people were operating from these stalls.

“The 62 legitimate stall holders were subletting for a pay of US$150 to US$200 per month. Meaning that we are not getting a fair return for our money as the city council,” he said.

Masunda said the city council has started carrying out an audit and the stalls will be re-allocated accordingly.