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Zim cops, street vendors clash
06/10/2005 21:50 - (SA)
Harare - Police armed with batons and riot shields fought running battles with street traders this week as authorities pressed ahead with a clampdown against street vendors in Harare?s southern townships, a Zimbabwe newspaper reported on Thursday.
Police have arrested 14 706 vendors, seized their produce and fined them a total of Z$782m ($31 000) over the past two weeks in a revival of President Robert Mugabe's hated Operation Murambatsvina - Drive Out Filth - according to official figures.
Police have codenamed the latest sweep Operation Hatidzokereshure - No Sneak Return.
The UN estimates 700 000 Zimbabweans have lost their homes, livelihoods or both in Murambatsvina, launched May 19.
Scarce maize meal, cooking oil, soap, flour, sugar, rice, fish and chicken meat were impounded when parliamentary police stormed the streets.
Police spokesperson Loveless Rupere was quoted as saying the crackdown against illegal vending was "a routine exercise".
Shortage of staple foods
Opposition legislator Priscilla Misihairabwe-Mushonga said there were frequent shortages of staples such as maize meal in local stores, forcing many residents to buy from vendors.
The informal sector is also one of the few remaining sources of jobs in a country facing over 70% unemployment.
"What the police are doing is an act of wickedness and very intolerable especially in these difficult times when it is hard to get a job," the Mirror quoted street vendor Peter Gumbo as saying. "Most of us are eking out a living from selling these basic commodities."
Some residents, however, accused the vendors of snapping up scarce commodities in bulk whenever they appear in stores and charging exorbitant prices for them, the paper said.
Economic difficulties
Late on Wednesday, a rowdy crowd stretching back nearly 1km besieged a supermarket in Harare's northern Avonlea suburb where sugar was on sale at the controlled price of Z$4 500 (17 cents) a kilogramme. The black market price is over Z$50 000 ($2).
Zimbabwe's agriculture-based economy has been in freefall since the government began seizing thousands of white-owned farms in 2000 for redistribution to blacks.
Years of drought have compounded the country's difficulties and an estimated four million of Zimbabwe's 12 million people are in urgent need of food aid, according to UN figures.
The state-controlled Herald newspaper reported this week that Mugabe ordered the Murambatsvina blitz "to nip in the bud a Ukrainian-style revolution by dispersing the slum dwellers via the demolition of their habitats".
The report contradicted previous government claims that there was no political motive for the demolitions, which it said were aimed at cleaning up urban slums. Opposition leaders claimed from the start the campaign was aimed at breaking up their support base among the urban poor.
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