Amnesty film reveals Zimbabwe slum horror

Amnesty International today released new secretly-filmed footage from Zimbabwe revealing the “desperate plight” of people it said were made homeless by the government’s slum clearance policy.

The images, which had to be smuggled out of the African country, show a squalid makeshift camp with tents fashioned from flimsy sheeting, people queuing for water, and children playing on the ramshackle site.

They illustrated the “horrifying conditions” – including shortages of food and clean water – faced by those caught up in President Robert Mugabe’s Operation Murambatsvina (Drive Out Trash), Amnesty said.

It claimed they were filmed earlier this month at Hopley Farm, an informal camp on the outskirts of Harare set up after an official transit camp was closed by the government.

Amnesty’s researcher on Zimbabwe, Audrey Gaughran, said the people in the film had been “dumped” at the camp with only limited access to basic human needs.

“When Amnesty met those people their situation was desperate,” she said.

“They had little or no food, no sanitation, very irregular access to clean water and almost no proper shelter.”

The agency said it believed up to 2,000 people were living at the site, and although conditions had improved since it was there, it was concerned that more such camps could exist.

Operation Murambatsvina, which saw citizens cleared from the suburbs around the major cities in a demolition programme, is estimated to have affected some 700,000 people.

Amnesty believes 5,000 to 6,000 were moved to transit camps. Last month a highly critical UN report on the scheme was published.

Camps in Harare and Bulawayo were closed, Amnesty said, and those living there were either scattered around rural areas or taken back to the sites of their demolished homes.

“Amnesty International found evidence that the government of Zimbabwe was seeking to hide evidence of the visible signs of the problems it created,” Ms Gaughran said.

The Zimbabwean government claims Operation Murambatsvina was aimed at clearing slums and flushing out criminals.

But the opposition Movement for Democratic Change claims it was designed as a punishment for its supporters in poor urban districts for voting against the ruling Zanu-PF party in parliamentary elections.