Of course, indirect costs are impossible to gauge. Clearly the withdraw of $700 million in spending power from a $4 billion economy must have very far-reaching ramifications for the formal sector in terms of spending on food, clothing, transport, education, health, etc. Total consumer spending in the Zimbabwe economy in mid-2005 is of the order of Z$35 trillion, and, thus, the direct reduction in consumer spending that will have a knock-on effect across the formal sector will be equivalent to a 20% cutback. This will have serious knock-on implications for retail turnovers, factory output, etc in the formal sector. Clearly there will some offsetting effects. Some consumers who had accessed products from the informal sector will now be forced into the formal sector, and already there are reports in the Herald of the Government preparing stands and building retail factory shells for erstwhile informal sector participants. But the cushioning impact of this will be small. The conclusions are sobering. Total unemployment will probably rise from the current 1.5 million people, excluding informal sector employees, to around 2.25 million. This is 45% of the workforce, but, however, this excludes 750 000 communal and small-scale farmers. If these are included, unemployment reaches 60%. The direct impact on output (GDP) will be a likely reduction of some 17.5%. Various knock-on effects, conservatively, might add another 2.5% to give a 20% reduction, or very nearly two-thirds of the total output decline since 1998. Long-term effects are impossible to estimate. From a humanitarian and social viewpoint, there must be a substantial drop in the number of children attending schools, and in the number of people able to afford food, let alone shelter and medical care. Reasons given by authorities for the campaign The City Council, various Government Ministers, and Government officials have advanced a whole miscellany of reasons for this operation. One general explanation is that it was literally a clean-up operation. The shanty dwellings and informal markets and stalls were an eyesore, and spoilt the beauty of the cities like Harare. Related to this was the explanation that the vendors and operations of commuter transporters were also causing chaos in the central business districts, including interfering with the flow of traffic, and it was therefore necessary “to restore order”. The main official justification for the campaign against informal traders and vendors seems to be that, not only were they operating illegally in violation of various by-laws, but also they were engaging in a variety of other illegal activities, such as illegal dealing in foreign currency, or profiteering by hoarding scarce commodities such as mealie meal, cooking oil, and petrol, and selling them way above the controlled price. There were also allegations that there was dealing in stolen goods, and that these illegal activities were undermining the economy. The Police Commissioner, Augustine Chihuri, went so far as to say that Operation Murambatsvina was meant to “clean the country of the crawling mass of maggots bent on destroying the economy”. 34