Rejoice Ngwenya, AfricanLiberty.org, Harare, Zimbabwe

Friday, March 14, 2008

In May 2005, Police and Para-military forces on the instruction of president Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe carried out a brutal operation called 'Operation Murambatsvina' (meaning literally "remove the dirt") in which homes and livelihoods of over one million Zimbabwe's urban poorest of the poor were destroyed. This action sent shockwaves around Africa and the world resulting in an UN-sponsored investigation in which Anna Tabaijuka, the Executive Director of UN-HABITAT castigated Mugabe and came within syllables of calling him a modern-day Idi Amin. At the time, Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of Movement for Democratic Change MDC, Zimbabwe's largest opposition party, was expected to have spearheaded a national civic uprising that would have completely wiped out Mugabe's supremacy, but that never came.