Operation Murambatsvina Research Articles

The Paucity of Female Educational Leadership in Politically Volatile Context of Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe is one country that experienced deep political turmoil soon after attaining independence in 1980. This study explored the intertwining of violent politics, the politics of fieldwork and the paucity of female educational leadership research by examining the volatile contexts within which the process of knowledge construction takes place. The researcher reviewed related literature to gain insights into the impact of volatile context on research. The study provides a review of literature on issues and concepts related to the studies put forward by other scholars within which the study was discussed and analysed. The review of related literature was conducted mainly to analyse three interweaving factors: the visibility of studies on educational leadership and management publications in 2008, migration and political violence in Zimbabwe. The study established that the terror operation (Gukurahundi) waged in Midlands, Matebeleland South and Matebeleland North provinces from 1982 to 1987, the formation of the political opposition party - Movement for Democratic (MDC) and commercial farm invasions in 1999, operation Murambatsvina in 2005 and elections in 2008 are enough evidence that the Mugabe regime developed a tradition of using violence and intolerance as a tool of consolidating political power. These events formed a complex multi-layered volatility that silenced not only academic research but other forms of documentation.

Displacement in NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names

Displacement has been a major theme in African literature and, arguably, a central preoccupation of African diasporic fiction on migration. This article examines three intertwined levels of displacement in NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names (London: Vintage, 2013). The first level is the internal displacement suffered by Zimbabweans in the aftermath of Operation Murambatsvina in 2005, which was purportedly aimed at cleansing urban areas of rubbish. The second level concerns the resultant emigration of Zimbabweans to other southern African countries to escape poverty. The third is exemplified by the illegal emigration of Bulawayo’s protagonist, Darling, to the USA. I argue that the three levels of displacement are rooted in the abjection induced by political, economic, and social disintegration. The analysis reveals why the characters in We Need New Names cannot enjoy the Afropolitan identity of characters in the works of diasporic authors like Taiye Selasi and Ngozi Chimamanda Adichie. The analysis counters Helon Habila’s criticism of Bulawayo’s novel as “poverty porn” and adds context to the discourse on migration, both legal and illegal, within and out of Africa.

AFRICAN MULTILATERAL RESPONSES TO THE CRISIS IN ZIMBABWE

The Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) represents one of the key normative developments towards mitigating global human rights violations. Normatively, the RtoP advances the notion of responsible sovereignty by obligating states to protect their people from humanitarian catastrophe and emphasises the residual role of the international community in the event of lack of capacity or the state's unwillingness to protect. It is in this context that this article examines RtoP mitigation measures instituted by the South African Development Community (SADC) and the African Union (AU) as regional multilateral institutions in responding to the crisis in Zimbabwe. The article considers the extent to which the responses have been guided implicitly or explicitly by RtoP principles. The evolution and consolidation of the humanitarian crisis has been considered, with specific focus on the human security impact of government policies, in particular, Operation Murambatsvina (the destruction of what were deemed illegal housing structures in major cities in Zimbabwe in May 2005) and the unprecedented 2008 electoral violence as a result of increased militarisation of governance structures. Debate on the applicability of RtoP to the crisis in Zimbabwe is thus located within the broader framework of the normative theories of international relations that forms the basis of RtoP. The article argues that escalation of the government induced humanitarian crisis was as a result of lack of timeous or effective responses by both the AU and SADC. Again, the AU and SADC responses were significantly influenced by diverse, often mutually exclusive, interpretations of the main causes of the crisis. Another salient finding is the extent to which politicisation of RtoP and lack of political will undermined RtoP operationalisation.

‘Invisible existence’: Perspectives of forced migrants’ living within Zimbabwe

Abstract Involuntary human mobility within and outside national borders continue to raise connotations of these migrants being dispossessed of more than their physical shelter. In 2005, the Zimbabwean government demolished hundreds of buildings, which it had condemned as illegal through a program code named Operation Murambatsvina. Likewise, for the people dislodged by this program, the article contends that internal displacement did not only lead to loss of shelter but also denied them their inherent dignity and rendered them ‘invisible’. In turn, this heightened their susceptibility to deprivations that are synonymous with forced migration. Therefore, this article aims to explore the forced migrants’ perspectives of the effects of displacement on their lives vis-à-vis the above contentions. It mainly seeks to address the displaced people’s perceptions and socially constructed meanings of internal displacement. This qualitative article is based on empirical data gathered from Hopley and Caledonia settlements in Zimbabwe. The essay uses purposive sampling and snowballing to capture the people living in displacement. The article’s findings indicate that displacement births adaptive preferences which are used to counter the negative effects experienced due to the conditions in their settlements. Despite the conspicuousness of Hopley and Caledonia residents’ type of shelter, the article also establishes that internal displacement has ironically increased their invisibility both within and outside Zimbabwe. The article determines that their ‘invisibility’ is manifested through waning interest by institutions mandated to safeguard their assistance and protection, which exposes them to heightened vulnerabilities.

Planning scholarship and the fetish about planning in Southern Africa: the case of Zimbabwe’s operation Murambatsvina

ABSTRACTContributing to the resurgent debate on urban informality in the global south, Kamete (2013) charged that urban planners in Southern Africa have a fetish about informality that is fuelled by an obsession with modernity. In these and other writings, Zimbabwe’s 2005 Operation Murambatsvina (OM) is used as a prototype planning malfeasance. Using the concept of fetish and fetishism, this paper argues that a fixation on and fetish about planning and planners has led some planning scholars to churn out misplaced or misleading understandings of OM regarding the role of planning (in) the operation. Inevitably, recommendations for planning reform from such scholarship are largely inefficacious. It is time planning scholars looked seriously beyond planning for both analytical tools and space for political activism.

‘We have not made anybody homeless’: regulation and control of urban life in Zimbabwe

In May and June 2005, thousands of Zimbabweans were brutally displaced from urban areas. But ‘Operation Murambatsvina’ was not simply an unpredictable ‘tsunami,’ rather it provides a moment in which long-held prejudices and assumptions which shaped the developmental state became visible, reflecting not just the internalisation of the Rhodesian, modernist world-view, but also its imbrication with local understandings of home and home-ness. To see Murambatsvina as simply a politically expedient move is to miss the deep resonance of the political rhetoric, the ways it was embedded in the state, and how it is shaped by norms of citizenship. Contextualised against Harare's urban politics, the clearances reveal a long-standing set of policies designed to regulate and control urban life, forming part of a broader crisis of the post-colonial developmental state.

The Plight of Internally Displaced Children: A Case of Zimbabwe

Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) are some of the most neglected vulnerable populations in the world. They are often neglected because they are an internationally and legally unacknowledged group amongst the Moving and Vulnerable Peoples (MVPs) due to a lack of legislature pertaining to them. This study seeks to critically assess the educational opportunities available to internally displaced children in Zimbabwe who were affected by the farm invasions, illegal settlements and various government operations like “operation murambatsvina.” The study also assesses the psycho social support afforded them as well as the economic and social issues arising due to their dilemma in Zimbabwe. In this study, a qualitative phenomenological design was used with focus group discussions, interviews and observations as data collection methods with eleven participants comprising of (4) four children, representing every ward in which they have been resettled, one traditional village leader, one ward councillor, two (2) school teachers, Chipinge district education officer, one YEP centre administrator and the education programme coordinator for the Norwegian Refugee Council. Findings from this study revealed that displaced persons face a high level of discrimination and ostracism from the host community arising from differences in culture and traditional beliefs. Jealousies also arise from the host community due to the somewhat elevated status of the resettled persons due to the assistance they receive from service providers which leads to feelings of inferiority in children and consequently affecting educational performance. The study also revealed that IDP children face a host of challenges from home ranging from economic to protection issues that may lead into them dropping out of school with no hope of ever recovering the lost time. The study highly recommends acknowledgement of the existence of IDPs such that they are afforded quick assistance within a legal framework for sustainability of livelihoods.

The policy-planning divide: an evaluation of housing production in the aftermath of operation Murambatsvina in Zimbabwe

There is a very thin line of divide between policy and planning, let alone between policy and politics. In most post-colonial states, the situation has been aggravated by the ruling elites’ determination to divorce themselves completely from colonial practices. This in turn has significantly transformed the policy environment to an extent where its interface with implementation is obscure. This paper examines the policy-planning divide from a housing perspective. It singles out policy issues as well as the political environment as key factors that influence the physical planning environment for housing. Using the case study of housing reconstruction in the aftermath of slum clearance (Operation Murambatsvina/Operation Clean-up) in Zimbabwe, the paper argues that if national policies that impinge on physical planning are not well defined; they can have negative implications on the implementation and outcome of projects. The situation is further complicated by unlimited influence party politics has on physical planning. What emanates from the case study is a mere manifestation of elite decision making driven by the economy of affection. The emerging issues from this discourse clearly show how difficult it is to operate in a public domain riddled by selfish motives.

Daniel Compagnon. A Predictable Tragedy: Robert Mugabe and the Collapse of Zimbabwe. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011. 334 pp. List of Acronyms. Notes. Index. Acknowledgments. $39.95. Cloth.

Daniel Compagnon. A Predictable Tragedy: Robert Mugabe and the Collapse of Zimbabwe. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011. 334 pp. List of Acronyms. Notes. Index. Acknowledgments. $39.95. Cloth. Daniel Compagnon is no stranger to Zimbabwean studies, having previously co-authored Behind the Smokescreen with John Makumbe before the country fell into unprecedented crisis in 2000. His deep knowledge of the political developments and dynamics is fully reflected in this current book, which seeks to explain the route taken by Zimbabwe into crisis. Unlike authors unfamiliar with the evolution of nationalist politics along neopatrimonial and authoritarian lines which portended a future crisis, and who were thus easily blinded by the rhetoric of progress and cosmetic signs of Zimbabwe as a successful transitional state, Compagnon insists that the crisis was predictable to those who cared to look beyond myths of political stability and pretenses of economic rationality. In eight solidly researched and ably argued chapters, Compagnon manages convincingly to pursue his important thesis of a predictable tragedy. Introducing his book, Compagnon unpacks a catalogue of myths forged by the Mugabe regime and outsiders to cover the nakedness of absolutism, authoritarianism, and economic irrationality. One such myth: Mugabe created a democratic multiracial nation-state. Once one goes beyond the myths, the important question to ask, according to Compagnon, is not what went wrong in Zimbabwe, but why it took so long to plunge into crisis. He boldly states: Contrary to the view commonly held in the media and by some observers - that there was a sudden turn of events in 2000, supposedly reversing a previous trend towards democratization - the political system set in place at independence and throughout the 1980s was authoritarian in essence (8). A corpus of evidence amplifies Compagnon's thesis, beginning with the internal purging that took place inside ZANU while it was based in Mozambique; the use of the Fifth Brigade in the 1980s to engage in ethnic cleansing of the Ndebele-speaking people, code-named Gukurahundi (operation cleaning up the chaff), which left twenty thousand civilians dead; Operation Murambatsvina (operation clean-up) in 2005, which left more than seventy thousand people without shelter; and after March 29, 2008, Operation Mavhoterapapi (Operation how did you vote), which targeted all those who voted for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). These are among the most glaring cases of authoritarianism and violence. But Compagnon provides a chronologically and thematically detailed analysis of this phenomenon beginning with how ZANU-PF assumed control of the political arena (chapter 1); how Mugabe embraced violence as a cornerstone of his political survival (chapter 2); how civil society became an incubator for a credible opposition within a terrain dominated by political intolerance (chapter 3); how ZANU-PF and Mugabe muzzled freedom of expression and reduced the media to a batdefield (chapter 4); how the judiciary was subjugated by the executive (chapter 5); how Mugabe authorized a chaotic land reform that resulted in human tragedy (chapter 6); how ZANU-PF elites and their cronies assumed the class of state bourgeoisie through brazen plundering of die national economy (chapter 7); and ending with how the international community, SADC, and South Africa failed to save the people of Zimbabwe from ZANU-PF misrule and Mugabe's executive lawlessness and political debauchery. …

Catastrophe: what went wrong in Zimbabwe?

* Glossary of acronyms, personalities, organisations * Timeline * Preface and Acknowledgements * Prologue: Two birthdays * 1. Conquest * 2. White supremacy and the settler state * 3. From UDI to Lancaster House * 4. ZANU in power - the 1980s * 5. The 1990s - when the wheels began to fall off * 6. Disaster years, and the third chimurenga * 7. From Operation Murambatsvina to an inclusive government * 8. How did it go wrong? * Select bibliography

Unconventional housing provision: reflections on health aspects: a case study of Zimbabwe

When the Zimbabwean government embarked on the countrywide destruction of unconventional urban housing settlements code-named “Operation Murambatsvina”, it received international condemnation for displacing people and destroying livelihoods. While the operation negatively affected the residents, it also had some positive effects, given that most of the settlements that had sprouted up in cities did not have proper physical infrastructure. However, their destruction did not put a stop to spontaneous housing, as the displaced people relocated to peripheral locations, perpetuating some unconventional settlements already in existence and erecting new ones. The failure of states to cope with massive demand for low-income housing simply means that unconventional housing will not disappear in the foreseeable future. Unfortunately, these areas lack proper physical infrastructure, which is the most important health component of human settlements. The most realistic means of dealing with these health concerns is to ensure that the settlements are equipped with proper physical infrastructure. This paper critically evaluates physical infrastructure provision in unconventional housing settlements in Harare, Zimbabwe. The argument is that developing countries need to accept unconventional housing as part of their housing options for the poor. The authors conclude that the only way to provide proper and healthy housing for the urban poor is to streamline government policies in order to address the critical issues that affect human settlements.

Operation ‘Live Well’ or ‘Cry Well’? An Analysis of the ‘Rebuilding’ Programme in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe

This article analyses the effectiveness of the ‘rebuilding’ programme known as Operation Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle or ‘Operation Live Well’ in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second-largest city. The programme was the successor to the massive 2005 urban clean up operation that was codenamed Operation Murambatsvina. Operation Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle was chaotic and further excluded the deserving victims of Operation Murambatsvina, some of whom were forcibly driven out of the city and dumped in transit camps from where they were dispersed to rural areas. Its implementation broke low-income housing delivery norms by imposing national housing committees headed by army personnel, over-ruling local authorities and ignoring public health by-laws. The outcomes of the programme included houses allocated to members of the army, the ruling party and their acquaintances, and buildings constructed on unsuitable land, without basic services such as water or sanitation, the occupation of which posed a disease risk. This worsened the already strained political relations between the city council and central government. The article argues that the rebuilding programme was merely a smokescreen intended to hide the national government's brutality towards the urban poor. The programme's politicised execution reflected a national government that was at war with both the urban poor and the local authority, which was run by the MDC opposition.

Operation Murambatsvina and the Politics of Street Vendors in Zimbabwe

Soon after the government of Zimbabwe began a wide-ranging demolition of the informal sector infrastructure on 19 May 2005, some street vendors whose market stalls had been destroyed were back at their trading sites. Four years after this clean up exercise, code-named Operation Murambatsvina, tens of thousands of informal traders could be seen on the pavements of Harare and other Zimbabwean cities. While debates about murambatsvina have focused on why this blitz occurred and how it affected livelihoods depending on the informal economy, little is known about the vendors who revived their activities in the post-murambatsvina period. This case study of Makomva Business Centre in Harare's Glen View Township attempts to understand how the ‘survivors’ of this blitz responded and explains why they responded in the manner in which they did. The study found out that rather than resorting to organised forms of resistance, the murambatsvina victims realised their limited capacity to confront the armed police and a government determined to use brute force. Instead, street vendors devised more subtle forms of resistance. Contrary to the argument that by not mobilising confrontational resistance against the destruction of their houses, businesses and jobs, Zimbabwean informal traders were apolitical, this study argues that street vendors demonstrated a high level of sophistication and political maturity by opting for adaptive resistance. Indeed, rather than viewing road-side traders as passive victims of state-sponsored violence, this article perceives them as critical political thinkers whose interactions with the state are guided by a nuanced understanding of the broader politics of the day.

Struggles for urban land by the Zimbabwe Homeless People’s Federation

This paper discusses the land struggles of the urban poor in Zimbabwe and the emerging strategies used by the alliance of the Zimbabwe Homeless People’s Federation and its partner Dialogue on Shelter to address these struggles in the face of continued economic and political crisis. The paper looks at how they are navigating this space and creating new solutions for housing and livelihood strategies. It considers the recent history of informal settlements and government measures to control or destroy them, including Operation Murambatsvina in 2005, which made hundreds of thousands of people homeless. It discusses the pragmatic decisions regarding partnership with different government agencies that the alliance has had to make in light of the sustained political and economic crisis, and the positive responses, especially from some local governments. It suggests that these decisions and strategies taken at a time of crisis and rapid change should be seen as part of a longer-term debate that seeks to change the relationship between communities of the urban poor and the state. Today, the alliance presents government with an alternative way of dealing with land and housing issues. Although progress to date has been minimal given the scale of need, there is a strong basis for partnership that can be scaled up.

Anticipating TheTsunami: Rumours, Planning and The Arbitrary State in Zimbabwe

Using ethnographic material alongside newspaper and NGO reports, this article explores popular responses to ZANU PF's devastating Operation Murambatsvina, commonly dubbed Zimbabwe'stsunami, which targeted informal markets and ‘illegal’ housing across Zimbabwe between May and August of 2005, making an estimated 700,000 people homeless and indirectly affecting a quarter of Zimbabwe's population. The article argues that central to experiences of these dramatic events ‘on the ground’ (particularly in Harare's high- and low-density suburbs of Chitungwiza and Hatfield, where most of the ethnographic material was collected) was a profound tension between the resonances evoked by official appeals to a reassertion of ‘order’ and formal planning procedures, and the spectacle of ZANU PF's public demonstration of its ability to deploy state ‘force’ ruthlessly, and indeed ‘arbitrarily’; that is, as, when and how it chose. Although the brutal execution of the programme was widely condemned by observers and victims alike, less reported has been the way in which official justifications for the operation were sometimes recognizable and salient to people living in urban areas across Zimbabwe, resonating with memories of past clearances, or with longstanding and divergent aspirations for respectability, urban ‘order’, and a functioning, bureaucratic state. It is argued that in the ambiguity and uncertainty generated by this tension the political advantages of the operation for the ruling party become most apparent. Relating the plethora of rumours circulating at the time (about the ‘hidden agendas’ behind the operation) to Mbembe's work on post-colonial conviviality, the article argues that like Mbembe's satirical cartoons these rumours did not so much undermine or subvert the authority of ZANU PF as reinforce its omnipotent presence. However, unlike the pessimism of Mbembe's vision of all encompassing power, it is argued that if the rumours that circulated about Operation Murambatsvina are an example of the constant re-making of ‘stateness’ on the margins, then the uncertain ambiguity of such rumours can not only reinforce the omnipotent presence of the ‘state power’, but also illustrate the omnipresence of its fundamental insecurity.

Operation Murambatsvina: Impact on psychological functioning of the survivors

Operation Murambatsvina (English: Operation Drive Out Rubbish), also officially known as Operation Restore Order, was a campaign by Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwean government to forcibly clear slum areas across the country. The campaign started in 2005 and according to United Nations estimates has affected at least 700,000 people directly through loss of their home or livelihood. Robert Mugabe and other government officials characterize the operation as a crackdown against illegal housing and commercial activities, and as an effort to reduce the risk of the spread of infectious disease in these areas. However, the campaign was met with harsh condemnation from Zimbabwean opposition parties, church groups, non-governmental organizations, and the wider international community. The United Nations has described the campaign as an effort to drive out and make homeless large sections of the urban and rural poor, who comprise much of the internal opposition to the Mugabe administration.

'Hawks and Doves': The Impact of Operation Murambatsvina on Johane Marange Apostolic Church in Zimbabwe

AbstractThe paper discusses the socio-economic and religious impact of Operation Murambatsvina on Johane Marange Apostolic Church in Masvingo, a city and Zvishavane, a mining town. It adopts a comparative approach in order to demonstrate the extent to which this phenomenon impacted on the religious and socio-economic activities of this movement in the two urban centres. While the majority of the church members were negatively affected, there are some who unintentionally benefited from this operation. The church was threatened numerically and theologically as some members were forced to translocate to rural areas. It is argued that in spite of the continued disruptions by the government and municipal authorities, the Vapositori of Marange continue to operate their informal business and missionary activities without necessarily compromising their traditions. The paper uses the 'hawks and doves' metaphor to demonstrate the relationship between the marauding government and municipal police and the vulnerable Vapositori during and in the post-Murambatsvina era.

Operation Murambatsvina: The dynamics and escalation of Zimbabwean intra-state conflict

In April 2005, Zimbabwe held general elections which saw the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) emerge as victors for the umpteenth time. Despite this win, the ruling party seems to suffer paranoia, as manifested by the recent Operation Murambatsvina. A look at the Zimbabwean political history points to the fact that Zimbabwean elections have been characterised by violence which has landed the country in an economic morass. This paper looks at the dynamics of Zimbabwean political conflict using Operation Murambatsvina as a case study. The paper expresses the view that like many others of its nature, this operation was a purge against the people who are suspected to support the opposition parties, particularly the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

THE POETICS OF STATE TERROR IN TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY ZIMBABWE

Zimbabwe's ‘patriotic history’ – the official state ideology of the new millennium – conforms to Achille Mbembe's theorization of a postcolonial ‘master fiction’ as the state's attempt to create its own world of meaning, which seeks to govern the production of all other socially produced meanings. The Zimbabwean master fiction is an accumulation of distinct narrative segments with separate official designations. The takeover of rural farmland (the so-called ‘Third Chimurenga’) was recently followed by an urban supplement – operation Murambatsvina, or ‘sweeping out the filth’. The article is centrally preoccupied with the generic properties of Zimbabwe's master fiction, claiming that in narrative terms it corresponds to what has been called the adventure narrative of ordeal. Furthermore, the current ‘patriotic’ master fiction may be seen to have been anticipated, rehearsed and reinforced by popular adventure novels of ordeal published locally since 1980 and written by authors such as Garikai Mutasa, Edmund Chipamaunga, Rodwell Machingauta, Lilian Masitera and Claude Maredza. The existence of a ‘popular’ public realm that is in contact with the domain of political discourse, with which it may be exchanging textual strategies, helps to explain why the implementation of the current master fiction has been so successful. The article examines the key generic and narrative properties of the Zimbabwean state fiction with reference to both a representative sample of popular novels and non-fictional texts generated by the state.

Rethinking the language of politics in 21st century Zimbabwe: A critical discourse analysis perspective

The struggle for political supremacy in postcolonial Zimbabwe has of late assumed a new form in which discourse contestations have taken centre-stage. The Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU PF) politicians have engaged in discourse construction and discourse manipulation as tools of discrediting, vilifying and outmanoeuvring their perceived political opponents. This has been evident during and after the execution of the Fast Track Land Reform Programme (the Third Chimurenga) and the urban slums clearance exercise (Operation Murambatsvina). Applied propaganda techniques in the form of discourse control, semantic twists, popular appeal, word approval, semantic forgery and semantic shifts have been deployed in attempting to justify the nobility of unpopular government programmes that have been condemned both locally and internationally. The article concentrates on ZANU PF political discourse because other political players in do not have access to the state controlled media. In attempting to unravel these deep-seated political machinations of the ZANU PF government, the article uses a mixed conceptual framework of hegemony theory and critical discourse analysis, coupled with empiricism. . LWATI: A Journal of Contemporary Research Vol.3 () 2006: pp.223-235