US embassy cable - 05HARARE944

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 HARARE 000944 
 
SIPDIS 
 
AF FOR DAS T. WOODS 
AF/S FOR B. NEULING 
OVP FOR NULAND 
NSC FOR DNSA ABRAMS, SENIOR AFRICA DIRECTOR C. COURVILLE 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/31/2010 
TAGS: PGOV, PHUM, EAGR, ECON, EAID, SOCI, ASEC, ZI, Restore Order/Murambatsvina 
SUBJECT: OPERATION RESTORE ORDER WREAKS HAVOC IN MUTARE 
 
Classified By: Charge d'Affaires, a.i., Eric T. Schultz under Section 1 
.4 b/d 
 
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Summary 
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1. (C) On June 23 and 24, poloff visited the city of Mutare 
in Zimbabwe,s Eastern Highlands to see the effects of 
Operation Restore Order.  During the visit she met with the 
City,s MDC Mayor as well as local businessmen.  The 
high-density suburb of Sakubva has been hard hit, and 
Mutare,s main market has been dismantled.  As elsewhere, the 
GOZ is providing no relief for the displaced and allowing 
outside organizations to provide only limited emergency 
assistance.  The mayor said he and his MDC-led City Council 
had few resources to assist their constituents.  He said 
Mutare had been particularly hard hit by the operation.  Many 
residents were third and fourth generation immigrants from 
neighboring countries who had no Zimbabwean rural home to 
return to.  In addition, they were primarily agricultural 
workers who had already been displaced by the government,s 
land seizures.  END SUMMARY. 
 
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Devastation with Limited Assistance 
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2. (SBU) On June 23, poloff observed that the large Green 
Market near the center of town was demolished, and piles of 
goods were still smoldering.  Former traders who lingered 
around the demolished market said they had nowhere to go and 
no transport to get anywhere.  They had not heard that they 
would be allowed to set up businesses elsewhere.  A nearby 
vegetable market was thriving, however.  One man told poloff 
that the police had left the market, which spilled over from 
the area of stalls into a nearby field, because people from 
the rural area came in to town to sell their produce there 
and the government did not want to discourage that. 
 
3. (SBU) On trips through the main high-density suburb of 
Sakubva on June 23 and 24, poloff observed that, for each 
house still standing, approximately four or five structures 
had been demolished.  Displaced people interviewed said they 
had torn down their own structures and moved their 
possessions when police demanded they did so.  (N.B. The 
police have been charging substantial fines for tearing down 
homes and destroying property, thus encouraging people to 
destroy their own homes.)  However, most people appeared to 
remain in the areas where their homes had been.  Those 
interviewed said they had nowhere else to go.  Some families 
had begun vegetable gardens on the foundations of destroyed 
homes.  A family with a new-born baby was huddling in a 
make-shift shelter on the foundation of their former home, 
spending much of their time trying to keep the baby warm and 
finding food.  (N.B., Mutare is at higher elevation than 
Harare, and temperatures were dipping to near freezing at 
night.)  MDC mayor Kagurabadza told poloff that during the 
previous week two newborn babies had died from exposure. 
 
4. (SBU) One woman, the owner of a former furniture factory 
in Sakubva, said the police had allowed her to move her 
equipment and materials to a house across the street, where 
work continued.  She had been promised that she and other 
informal traders would be moved to a new location to continue 
their businesses.  However, she did not know where or when 
the new area was projected to open.  The furniture factory 
owner told Embassy staff of a sports field where some of the 
displaced were waiting to be transported back to their rural 
homes. 
 
5. (SBU) On June 23, at the sports field camp, poloff 
observed a few families huddled near some tents, one of which 
bore the Red Cross symbol.  Police officers there questioned 
Embassy staff on the purpose of the visit and wrote down 
identifying information.  The officers said they had just 
finished setting up their station and were trying to conduct 
a census of the approximately 20 families in the camp.  They 
said poloff had just missed the Zimbabwe Red Cross staff who 
had set up the tents.  The GOZ was providing no support to 
the camp other than the police presence.  On June 24, when 
poloff returned, police said staff from Christian Care, which 
was planning to distribute food and bring additional tents, 
had just left the camp.  One of the displaced approached the 
Embassy vehicle and asked if we were there to take them away. 
 Police said that all the families were allowed to stay 
subject to agreeing to return to their rural homes but that 
no transport had yet been available. 
 
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MDC-led Council Neutralized 
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6. (C) On June 23, poloff met with Mutare Mayor Kagurabadza, 
who was then on annual leave but was spending his vacation 
gathering emergency supplies and distributing them in 
Sakubva.  He would only agree to meet outside of his office 
and would not tell poloff the location of the meeting until 
the last second due to fears that civil servants in his 
office would report the meeting to the CIO.  Kagurabadza said 
the MDC-dominated City Council, which had long faced 
obstruction from the GOZ, had not been advised when the 
operation began in Mutare.  He and the Council had had 
discussions with the police and the provincial governor after 
he operation began in Harare.  They had agreed to leave some 
shacks for people as a temporary solution until the Council 
could make alternative arrangements.  However, the police and 
the governor had not honored the agreement. 
 
7. (C) Kagurabadza said there had been unconfirmed reports 
that even approved structures were torn down.  There was one 
confirmed report of three houses destroyed by police despite 
the occupants having had their City Council-approved plans in 
hand when the police arrived.  The City council was trying to 
minimize the effects of the operation on the displaced but 
had no resources to do so and faced interference from the GOZ 
on this and other issues.  For example, the Ministry of Local 
Government had announced that the Council would no longer be 
authorized to sell new housing stands. 
 
8. (C) Kagurabadza said Restore Order was having a 
particularly disastrous effect on his constituents, because 
many were third or fourth generation descendants of 
immigrants, particularly from nearby Mozambique, and they had 
no rural home to go to.  He said that when the land invasions 
began, many former farmworkers from the timber estates were 
displaced and had settled in Sakubva.  It was difficult 
psychologically for these people to be displaced yet again. 
He estimated about 30,000 families, 40% of Mutare's 
population, had been displaced during Restore Order. 
 
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Effects on Local Industry Mixed 
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9. (SBU) On June 23, poloff met with Bill Johnstone of the 
Timber Producers Federation.  Johnstone said that, with the 
exception of door manufacturer Border Timbers, the 
Federation,s members had not been much affected by Restore 
Order, due to the fact that most employees lived on the 
timber estates.  On June 24, James Goneso of the General 
Agriculture and Plantation Workers, Union of Zimbabwe 
(GAPWUZ) also said that most GAPWUZ members lived on the 
plantations, but there were fears that Restore Order would 
enter the plantations and take down structures in workers, 
compounds.  Some workers had already been displaced because 
they had been living across the road from the plantations in 
areas that were destroyed during the Operation.  Goneso said 
some employees had already begun leaving for rural areas. 
Those who were the descendants of immigrants had nowhere to 
go, and many were hiding in the mountains or squatting in new 
areas.  On June 24, Josephat Rushinga of the Coffee Grower,s 
Association told poloff that many coffee plantation employees 
had been displaced from their homes in town or areas of 
roadside shacks near the plantations.  He said most employees 
were back to work but had needed several days to organize 
their affairs after their homes had been destroyed. 
 
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Comment 
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10. (C) Mutare has been among the areas hardest hit by 
Operation Restore Order and was one of the first parts of the 
country to see wide-scale destruction.  Two factors likely 
account for this: first, the city and its environs have been 
strongly supportive of the MDC and some of the worst fraud in 
the March parliamentary elections occurred in Manicaland. 
Second, the province is home to some of Zimbabwe,s richest 
agricultural land and largest commercial farms.  The labor 
shortage on these farms has been acute and the GOZ knew just 
where to look for agricultural workers ) Sakubva ) which 
was largely populated by former agricultural workers who had 
fled poor pay and abusive conditions and settled in the slum. 
 In fact, the first reports of people being forcibly sent to 
rural areas came out of Mutare.  That said, Restore Order is 
no more likely in the long run to stem the inevitable tide of 
urbanization in Mutare than it is anywhere else in Zimbabwe. 
SCHULTZ