specifically addressed the situation in Zimbabwe, a Ministerial Meeting in 2004 adopted a report critical of the human rights situation in Zimbabwe for the first time. 35 The context in which the clean-up operation was conducted, therefore, shows a country with a history of inequities that the national government has not been able to redress, a Government that inherited difficult structural economic problems that are difficult to solve without support by the international community. Its programme for equitable land redistribution could have been better justified by a transparent and fair redistribution of land to full-time farmers with secure tenure to safeguard investments and productivity. This is yet to happen. 1.6 The Motivations behind the Operation Against the background described above, a number of factors have been advanced as explaining the motivation and timing of Operation Restore Order held 48 days after the general election. The Government of Zimbabwe has given the following main justifications for the Operation: arresting disorderly or chaotic urbanization, including its health consequences; stopping illegal, parallel market transactions, especially foreign currency dealing and hoarding of consumer commodities in short supply; and reversing environmental damage caused by inappropriate urban agricultural practices. From the wide range of individuals and organizations interviewed by the Special Envoy and her team, a number of other alleged motivations emerged. They believed that the Operation: a. was a result of general concern over increasing chaos and congestion in the central business district of Harare and other major cities over which the Government was being blamed by the middle class; nostalgia over the role of Harare as the “Sunshine City” was on the rise; b. was an act of retribution against areas known by the Government to have voted for the opposition during the last few presidential and parliamentary elections; c. could have been conceived by a number of individuals as part of the politics of succession to President Mugabe; d. was a means of checking the power and influence of the war veterans, or ex-combatants; e. was a means to increase the flow of foreign currency through the "Homelink" scheme;36 f. was a pre-emptive strategy designed to prevent popular uprising, in light of deepening food insecurity and other economic hardships; g. was a mechanism designed to re-possess control of the conduct of business by some political leaders in the ruling party, thus establishing a system of political patronage over urban areas h. was a scheme to divert the attention of the President away from his increasing concerns over the underutilization of newly acquired commercial farms in rural areas; and i. represented a desire on the part of some political leaders to engineer a reverse urban-torural migration process, on the wrong belief that this was good for Zimbabwe’s national development. Many of the individuals holding the views above generally saw Operation Restore Order as a “smokescreen” for motives that had little to do with addressing the problem of informal structures 36 “No War in Zimbabwe”, Solidarity Peace Trust November 2004. The “Home Link” scheme was devised by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe to assist Zimbabweans in the Diaspora estimated at 3 million to utilize official channels to send their remittances back home thus increasing the inflow of foreign currency into the official banking system. Initially it worked very well when recipients were allowed to draw the money in foreign currency. This policy changed to local currency and the scheme could no longer attract funds as the parallel market rate was more than double what was offered by the official exchange. 20