The Impact of Zimbabwe’s Policies of Displacement

Last year, the government of Zimbabwe launched Operation Murambatsvina (“Remove the filth”), saying it wanted to eliminate illegal structures in urban areas of the country. The program destroyed thousands of people’s homes, effecting an estimated 700,000 people. Above, a satellite images a settlement near Harare, which had contained some 850 structures before last May.

Afterwards:

From the New York Times:

Mr. Mugabe’s aides called the program an urban cleanup effort, but human-rights critics and political opponents said it had been directed at peasants who make up the core of political opposition to Mr. Mugabe’s 25-year rule.

News reports said that the resumption of the demolitions had effectively wiped out a suburban Harare settlement called Porta Farm, where some 20,000 Zimbabwean peasants had lived for decades. The reports said the government riot police had burned homes and beaten citizens who had returned to the site, which had been cleared earlier this month, in an effort to re-establish their homesteads.

Hundreds of thousands of impoverished Zimbabweans have fled to the countryside or have been herded into makeshift camps after being ousted from their homes by the two-month-long campaign, dubbed “Operation Drive Out Trash” by Mr. Mugabe’s government.

Link to the Amnesty International report via Subtopia