INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS - LOOKING GLASS NEWS | |
'What can we do now? That is how we get food' |
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by Rochelle Mutton The Times OnLine Entered into the database on Sunday, June 05th, 2005 @ 18:57:51 MST |
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A WOMAN stands in the mangled ruins of her market stall in Bulawayo city centre,
eyes brimming with tears and unable to find the words to describe her grief and
fear. Hours earlier, dozens of heavily armed police demolished thousands of licensed
market stalls in Zimbabwe’s second city — smashing, burning and seizing
goods and arresting hundreds of vendors. Like thousands of others in this devastated city, this woman has lost her wares
and livelihood in one terrifying morning of destruction. “What can we
do?” she asked despairingly. Life savings have been reduced to black, acrid smoke rising in columns across
the town. “That is how we get rent, that is how we get food,” she
said. Another woman vendor sits amid the twisted metal and cardboard wreckage with
just a single bag of oranges on offer, desperate for a bus fare home. Near by, a man retrieves some bunches from his cart of squashed bananas and
is about to make a sale. Suddenly, a stampede down the street gives him the
split-second warning he needs to flee as a police pick-up truck carrying eight
officers swoops on to the scene. My reflexes are slower, leaving me in the midst of the police as they jump
from the truck, seize three women vendors and bundle them away. For the rest of the day, those terrified vendors with anything left to sell
hide behind cars and shopfronts, carrying only small samples of their wares.
Impassive gestures belie the frightened eyes and simmering anger of the Bulawayo
traders, who use the Shona word “gukurahundi” to describe their
plight. It means “the wind that sweeps away the chaff before the rain”,
and was used to describe the genocidal terror overseen by President Mugabe to
eliminate political opposition in the early 1980s. Mr Mugabe’s North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade killed thousands of the
minority Ndebele tribe that lives in the western Bulawayo region, and tortured
many more. David Coltart, legal affairs spokesman for the Movement for Democratic Change,
said that the crackdown was reminiscent not only of Gukurahundi, but also of
Apartheid, Pol Pot and the Nazis: “Police have used excessive, gratuitous
force towards people going about their business lawfully and innocently and
I have no doubt it’s a policy of retribution against people who are perceived
correctly as being opposed to this fascist regime.” |