Posted on 06/23/2005 7:13:47 PM PDT by blam
Children die beneath Mugabe's bulldozers
By Alistair Leithead in Harare
(Filed: 24/06/2005)
A piece of red plastic tape flutters from a post outside the remains of Lavender Nyika's home in Tafara - a place outside Harare which means "we are happy".
But there is little happiness here. The tape is a traditional sign representing a loss in the family, and while hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans have lost their homes, few have lost a daughter.
Lavender Nyika's daughter Charmaine was crushed to death
Charmaine was two years old and inside the family home when the police came with their bulldozers and levelled the house.
All that is left is the foundations, a pile of rubble and a small dirt grave with a wooden cross and a girl's name scrawled on the back of a piece of scrap metal.
"The police came. They had been sent to destroy the house," said Herbert Nyika, Charmaine's father. "They knocked down the building, the walls; they smashed everything. This was when our child was trapped inside. She died there." Her mother, Lavender, said: "I blame the government because it is they who instructed the police to do what they did. It is terrible. I have lost my daughter in such a strange way."
She added: "Of course they have managed to clean up the city but at the same time they have brought suffering to the people - property destruction, homelessness and now the death of a child."
The family is poor and their home was a small building in the back garden of a bigger house.
The Zimbabwean government has spent the past few years targeting white farmers, those with land and wealth; now it seems to be picking on the poor.
The Zimbabwean press yesterday admitted that two toddlers had died in the demolition drive - Charmaine, two, who died two weeks ago, and Terence Munyaka, 18 months, who died on Sunday from head injuries. As outrage rose around the world, the Zimbabwean police called on its officers to exercise more care. In London Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, said on behalf of the G8 countries: "We call on the government of Zimbabwe to abide by the rule of law and respect human rights."
Every day in Harare, in Bulawayo, in the towns and cities of Zimbabwe, police in riot gear are systematically moving from suburb to suburb forcing people from their homes. Bulldozers with their buckets raised are silhouetted on the skyline.
The scale of the clearance is so great there is too much work for the police to do - they are now forcing the people to destroy their own homes, or charging them a fee for demolition. On the roads are wheelbarrows piled high, trucks overloaded with cupboards, beds, mattresses - thousands and thousands of people making their way somewhere, but there is nowhere to go. Many are living in the open - their furniture arranged around them as if the walls were still there.
In Bulawayo, under the cover of darkness, a group of people huddled around a fire, a large pot of maize meal bubbling away on a wood stove. "They came to my home and they burned it down," one man said as he took his turn stirring the pot.
"They say they have a strategy, they say they are clearing up the towns," he says, confused as to why his home was destroyed, but too scared to speak against the government.
Old women, sick men and young mothers drag their mattresses inside the church hall, their few blankets all there is to keep away the bitterly cold African winter air.
The churches are full, their lavatories are overflowing, the people have nowhere else to go and so the government has created a solution. Well over 2,000 people have been moved to Caledonia Farm, a resettlement camp outside Harare, with no clean water, sanitation or access to food.
The entrance was blocked by police. Intelligence agents mingled among the poor and the homeless. We crept in through the bush to catch a glimpse of the camp, knowing to be caught would mean a two-year prison sentence.
Again people had arranged their furniture around them, huddled together under plastic sheets and blankets. A desperate mass of humanity forced from their homes by the government.
Some say the reason is political retribution, to punish the urban electorate for voting for the opposition.
Others say it will scatter the angry and dispossessed before the seeds of revolution can be sown; and others look even further ahead. They believe that forcing the people to rural poverty will make them dependent on the state for food and blankets and buy political patronage.
Either way hundreds of thousands of people are homeless, cold, destitute and desperate.
Have a good night rest!
What can be done? Africa is a basket case from stem to stern. We find hope when some leader can cut the AIDS rate from 30% to 15% by preaching a modicum of sexual responsibility. Intervention doesn't work. Non-intervention doesn't work. Aid doesn't work. Carrots don't work. Sticks don't work. I wish that I could propose some great conservative answer with parts of Milton Friedman and Thomas Jefferson, but there's nothing that can be done for a very long time.
That is not fair. Zim is a totally repressive dictatorship. You can't blame the citizens for not doing enough to stop Mugabe, he has power and he'll kill anyone who lifts a finger. I know it's frustrating and it's hard to be lectured to that you haven't done enough, but the answer isn't to return blame for blame.
Serious sanctions would go a long way. We did it with South Africa. Then again, we're playing tiddlywinks with China so I shouldn't expect much to be done about Zimbabwe. Anyway, there's a reason why I don't talk much about these issues anymore on FR and I've been reminded why.
Well, not now. Thanks to Jacques Chirac, we can't go into Zimbabwe now. He was the one. Shroeder would have backed down. The Left would have been cowed. But one man, Jacques Chirac, ensured that the oppressed people in the world would just have to go on being oppressed just a little bit longer. And Zim has reached that point at which anything is better than what they have now. If some other dictator replaces Mugabe, at least he can't be any worse.
He didn't have a vendetta against white farmers. He wanted his friends, family and associates to get free land. Those farms didn't go to the general public, you know.
You're right about that.
Lord have mercy.
And maybe SA isn't the best example of a success story.
:) I like hearing that. It makes me feel warm and/or fuzzy.
No SA isn't a good example but the point about the sanctions and worldwide debate is what I was getting at. I suppose we won't know his reaction until they actually happen. Then what? If he doesn't listen, are we going to invade Zimbabwe? Probably not, not that I think we should but it is a moral quandry. If Japan didn't bomb us in Pearl Harbor, would we have involved ourselves in WW2? I wonder about that.
You kidding? Get out of that toilet. It's over.
Next up - - South Africa.
LOL warm and fuzzies are good at this time of night!
Disgusting. May God bless the souls of these little ones and comfort their parents.
It is a question I have wondered about as well.
Pinging Viking Kitties.
Worldwide debate won't help Zimbabwe. Mugabe doesn't care. Nobody in power cares.
I don't know what to do. But if something is done to get Mugabe out, you won't hear me saying it was the wrong thing to do.
I just hope that the UN doesn't wait like they did last time. Anyway, I know that you know Satan is afoot and that we must pray and appeal to God and not man. I just realised that. I'm here criticising governments when the real ruler is Christ.
I think he should get capped but that's against the Geneva Convention :-)
I join you in prayer for these people, and you are my sister, as you know. :-)
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