14 Zimbabwe: No justice for the victims of forced evictions However, when it came to allocation of Operation Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle housing Bulawayo City Council maintained that the process should use the City’s existing housing waiting list as this is the standard procedure for allocating housing. This was despite acknowledging that many thousands of poor families in Bulawayo who were victims of Operation Murambatsvina would not be on the waiting list. In Zimbabwe in order to register on the housing waiting list people must pay a small yearly fee. Available housing plots (not houses) are then allocated on a first come, first served basis. When someone on the housing waiting list is offered a plot they must pay for it. In 2006 serviced plots in Bulawayo and Harare respectively were estimated at between US$600 and US$2,000. Many poor people cannot afford to register, let alone pay for a plot if one was ever offered to them. Only 346 of those on the Bulawayo City Council’s list of Operation Murambatsvina victims also appeared on the Council’s housing waiting list. Bulawayo City Council reportedly submitted these 346 names to the IMC. In April 2006 city officials told Amnesty International that of the 346 names submitted to the IMC, to their knowledge only 36 were allocated houses at Cowdray Park, out of the 700 houses available. Figures provided by the Chairperson of the Bulawayo IMC to a Parliamentary Committee investigating Operation Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle are different. According to the Parliamentary report the names of just 130 Operation Murambatsvina victims were submitted to the IMC by the City Council, of which only 43 had taken up the offer of housing. The Parliamentary Portfolio Committee stated: “The Chairperson [of the IMC] stated that the other people who were displaced by the clean up exercise were transported to their rural homes whilst others failed to raise the funds required to take up the houses.”43 The organisation Solidarity Peace Trust, in a report of 30 August 2006, stated that following Council objections to the IMC lists, 60 per cent of those on the Council’s list have now been allocated houses.44 Regardless of which figures are correct it would appear that very few Operation Murambatsvina victims in Bulawayo have benefited from the houses constructed at Cowdray Park. According to one city council official the Cowdray Park housing allocation list has been repeatedly altered so it is actually impossible to tell who is really getting the houses. “Houses have been double allocated due to political interference. I have seen approximately seven lists for those houses, as each former list has been nullified.”45 43 Second report of the Portfolio Committee on Local Government on progress made on the Operation Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle Programme, June 2006, S.C. 21, 2006. Solidarity Peace Trust, “Meltdown – Murambatsvina one year on”, 30 August 2006 45 Amnesty International interview with city workers and officials, April 2006. 44 Amnesty International 8 September 2006 AI Index: AFR 46/005/2006