US embassy cable - 05HARARE991

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 HARARE 000991 
 
SIPDIS 
 
AF FOR DAS T. WOODS 
AF/S FOR B. NEULING 
NSC FOR SENIOR AFRICA DIRECTOR C. COURVILLE 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/31/2010 
TAGS: PGOV, PREL, PHUM, PINR, ASEC, ECON, ZI, Restore Order/Murambatsvina 
SUBJECT: OPERATION RESTORE ORDER IN BULAWAYO 
 
REF: HARARE 980 
 
Classified By: Charge d'Affaires a.i., Eric T. Schultz under Section 1. 
4 b/d 
 
------- 
SUMMARY 
------- 
 
1. (SBU) Operation Restore Order has had a profound effect on 
Bulawayo, Zimbabwe,s second largest city, much as it has in 
other cities around the country.  During a visit to Bulawayo 
with Staffdel Simpkins on July 3-4, embassy staff viewed 
scenes of devastation and relief efforts at sites for 
displaced families.  Activists from Women of Zimbabwe Arise! 
(WOZA) offered compelling first person accounts of the 
destruction and individual coping efforts.  MDC MP for 
Bulawayo David Coltart further described efforts to care for 
victims, elaborated on possible GOZ objectives, and conceded 
that internal strife had prevented the MDC from responding 
effectively to Restore Order.  End Summary. 
 
--------------------------------------------- ------------ 
The Destruction in Bulawayo and Assistance to the Victims 
--------------------------------------------- ------------ 
 
2. (SBU) On July 4, the staffdel visited Kilarney, one of the 
destroyed settlements.  There was little remaining of the 
settlement to indicate that it had ever been more than a 
large, grassy field.  There was a piece of clothing in the 
mud and the occasional brick remains of a house.  The rest, 
including rubble from most of the destroyed dwellings, had 
been cleared away.  Only a handful of elderly men lingered in 
the area.  World Vision field officer Kilton Moyo said that 
Kilarney had been created as a settlement by the Rhodesian 
government to move blacks out of the city when Bulawayo was 
much smaller.  Some people had returned to the rural areas 
after independence, but the settlement had remained and 
received many new inhabitants in the 1980s, during the 
Gukurahundi, when the GOZ destroyed Ndebele villages and 
killed thousands of the ethnic minority. 
 
3. (C) At an Anglican church providing assistance to the 
people of Kilarney and other such settlements, families were 
crowded on the small church grounds, most in makeshift 
shelters, with only one small tent sheltering a family. 
Father Barnabas Nauende said the church was providing the 
space, water, transportation for children to school (one 
truck that several churches chipped in to fuel), and baskets 
of foodstuffs.  Parishioners had been collecting blankets and 
other items for distribution.  The church was working with 
World Vision and other churches providing similar support. 
Doctors and nurses volunteered their time for a weekly 
clinic, and the church provided medicines.  The church had 
held the weekly clinic before Operation Restore Order had 
begun but was experiencing such an increase in demand, that 
the last weekly clinic had completely wiped out the church,s 
small store of medicines, which would normally last a few 
weeks.  Doctors without Borders also had volunteer staff in 
the area and had visited the church. 
 
4. (C) Nauende said the government had been trying to move 
all the displaced into a large transit camp but that various 
religious leaders had been resisting the removal, due to the 
fact that the government had no facilities of any kind of 
planned for the camp.  So far, the churches had succeeded at 
keeping the displaced on their grounds.  Nauende said he was 
very worried about water rationing by the city and that food 
had been diverted from other programs to feed the newly 
displaced but, thus far, the churches had been a powerful 
force in protecting the people.  World Vision,s Moyo echoed 
concerns about diversion of food aid.  He said that, if 
famine struck as was probable, aid organizations would be in 
a poor position to assist. 
 
-------------------------- 
WOZA Tales of Displacement 
-------------------------- 
 
5. (C) WOZA activists, including leader Jenni Williams, met 
with the staffdel in a private home in an attempt to elude 
CIO officers who track their activities.  Members told their 
stories of displacement and discussed the challenges the 
group now faces.  WOZA member Shingiria Mupani, a single 
mother of six school-age children, said she had been a 
trader, licensed by the City Council, since 1987 and had 
lived in the high-density suburb of Old Pumula since 1996. 
Police had descended on the market where she had had a stall 
and confiscated her bags of vegetables as she was unloading 
them.  Later, police had forced her to dismantle her own home 
and told her to go back to her rural home.  Mupani was from 
Buhera, but like many Ndebele her homestead had been 
destroyed during the Gukurahundi.  Subsequent to the 
destructions of her home and business, she had been arrested 
after a June 29 WOZA demonstration and her fingerprints taken 
at the police station.  She had been told that, even if she 
were acquitted of the charges, the fingerprints on record 
would prevent her from receiving one of the new housing plots 
or vending stalls the government had promised.  The other 
women told similar stories. 
 
6. (C) Mupani said that few Zimbabweans were demonstrating 
against the operation because Zimbabweans had never had any 
education in human rights and democracy and had a culture of 
obeying leaders who held the responsibility for society,s 
future.  Although people rose up in the liberation struggle, 
afterwards they thought the work had been done and they could 
now trust their leaders.  In addition, Zimbabweans beyond 
those directly affected did not know what was going on. 
Williams said WOZA needed a way to get pictures of what was 
going on to others around the country in order to raise 
awareness because no Zimbabwean media dared run them. 
 
7. (C) Williams said Operation Restore Order was placing the 
group under additional stress.  She had not had contact with 
many members since their displacements.  Several of the women 
were facing trial for one of their demonstrations and were 
without legal representation because a human rights legal 
fund had turned down their request for support, saying it did 
not meet the definition of emergency aid.  The women said 
that they felt abandoned by others in civil society and by 
the international community. 
 
---------------------------------------- 
David Coltart on Operation, MDC Reaction 
---------------------------------------- 
 
8. (C) MDC MP David Coltart arrived late for a meeting at his 
offices on July 4.  He said he had been at a meeting with 
constituents for whose self-help projects he was trying to 
find funding, and the meeting had run longer than expected 
because there were so many new projects presented aimed at 
relieving the effects of Restore Order. 
 
9. (C) Coltart acknowledged that the MDC's internal divisions 
had prevented it from effectively opposing Restore Order.  He 
said there were many possible explanations for the operation. 
 He had heard a rumor that Solomon Mujuru was the driving 
force behind Restore Order as a way of exerting Zezuru power 
within the party.  A second possibility was retribution 
against constituencies that the MDC believed it had actually 
won but had gone to ZANU-PF through fraud.  Yet another was a 
preemptive strike against simmering anger by the populace 
concerning the deteriorating economic situation; the 
operations would distract them and render them unable to 
protest.  Still another was that Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe 
Governor Gideon Gono was the driving force in a move to 
gather more foreign exchange.  Finally, the operation was an 
opportunity for the GOZ to extend its patronage to the cities 
by getting rid of existing tenants and traders and giving out 
plots of land and trading stalls only to the favored and 
loyal.  Coltart said that, whatever the motivations, the 
government,s behavior during Restore Order was not an 
accident or an aberration; it was calculated. 
 
------- 
Comment 
------- 
 
10. (C) The Bulawayo visit once more underscored the depth of 
suffering Operation Restore Order has caused.  Virtually no 
part of the country has been untouched, but the operation has 
had a particularly devastating effect on the Ndeble people 
who predominate in and around Bulawayo.  It brought back 
memories of the horrors of the Gukurahundi and reminders of 
just how brutal a regime Robert Mugabe created. 
SCHULTZ