BLAMING THE VICTIMS

Posted to the web on: 05=July 2005
Ministers back Mugabe in clean-up campaign
Linda Ensor

Political Correspondent

CAPE TOWN — While some developed countries and the United Nations (UN) have either condemned or expressed concern about Zimbabwe’s controversial slum-clearance programme, a number of African housing ministers yesterday sympathised with President Robert Mugabe’s government action.

The ministers, attending an international housing seminar in Cape Town, said it was necessary to reverse the tide of urban migration, which had created sprawling, unsustainable slums around major cities in Africa.

It is estimated that there are about 1-billion slum dwellers in the world. Reducing this number is one of the aims of the UN’ Millennium Development Goals.

About 43% of the urban populations of developing countries live in slums.

About 300000 people are believed to have been displaced as a result of the Zimbabwean government’s action.

Kenyan Housing Minister Amos Kimunya said he sympathised with the actions of the Zimbabwean government in demolishing shacks and removing illegal slum dwellers in its Operation Restore Order.“However painful, evictions are necessary, Kimunya said.

In Kenya’s experience, slum dwellers would move only when they saw a government bulldozer, the minister said.

Kimunya said Kenya had adopted a different approach in trying to reverse the urbanisation trend, and was investing in his country’s rural areas.

Kimunya’s “bulldozer” comment drew an angry response from the audience at the seminar, which was organised by the housing department for developing countries in Africa to share their experiences and housing policies with their counterparts in Brazil and India. Bulldozers, one speaker said, brought back images of SA’s apartheid removals.

UN Habitat’s Eduardo Moreno also objected strongly, and said communities should be consulted and should agree on housing programmes.

There should also be forward-looking action plans to deal with urbanisation in a just way.

Zambian Housing and Public Works Minister Sylvia Masebo also highlighted the problems caused by migration from the rural areas to cities that did not have adequate housing and infrastructure to sustain them.

Zambia had a backlog of 1,2-million houses. The rights of slum dwellers had to be balanced with those settled in decent homes who were faced with declining property values, she said.

Zimbabwean Local Government, Public Works and urban Development Deputy Minister Morris Sakabuya emphasised that rural to urban migration had reached “alarming” levels in Zimbabwe. The government aimed to provide 250000 housing units a year and to clear the urban housing backlog by 2008.

The programme aimed to decongest urban areas,ridding them of illegal activities and “all sorts of social decadence” and to resuscitate rural areas, he said.

Where there were no jobs in urban areas people should return to work the land, Sakabuya said.

Kimunya said it was impossible to leave people in appalling slum conditions. “I think we owe it to our people to give them better conditions in life, to give them better housing and to remove them to rural areas.”

People were moving into cities under the illusion of finding a job and better life and were taking all the available space, he said.