• Update on families displaced into rural areas: in the October report we provided situational narratives on eleven groups of people, mostly those who had been displaced from Bulawayo into rural areas by the demolitions, some of them forcibly so. Most had moved five or more times in the space of a few months. The current report gives situational updates on these same groups one year on: around 75% have returned from rural areas to Bulawayo or Victoria Falls, where they are living in appalling conditions. Again this underlines the fact that you cannot change somebody’s identity from urban to rural, merely by dumping them in a rural area. • The way forward: it is of great concern to note that one year on, for victims very little has been delivered in terms of shelter in particular, not just by government, but by all players. The reasons for this and possible ways forward are discussed. 2. Murambatsvina: a review The UN report by Special Envoy Anna Tibaijuka remains the definitive document summarising events in Zimbabwe from 19 May 2005 up to early July 2005.13 During this time, according to this report, over 3 million Zimbabweans were directly or indirectly affected by the “indiscriminate and unjustified” demolition of tens of thousands of structures across Zimbabwe, and the blanket arrests of thousands of Zimbabweans working in the informal sector.14 The reasons and precise officials responsible for this massive and disastrous exercise remain conjectural. The following probable government motives, declared and undeclared, have been discussed in various reports including our own over the past year. Motives - declared • Criminalising of the informal sector Government officials at the time and since have insisted that the exercise was necessary to tidy up the cities, to enforce colonial building by-laws, and to rid the towns of criminal elements.15 Technically, many of the shelters destroyed did not conform to city by-laws, but some of these structures had been legitimised by being allowed to exist for up to thirty years, and had survived previous rounds of smaller scale demolitions.16 As the UN report shows, and as this report confirms, the majority of structures demolished, even though they may not have had formal plans and approval from local authorities, were good quality shelters with access to clean water, electricity and sewerage disposal. Apart from the sheer scale, what made these demolitions 13 Report of the Fact-finding Mission to Zimbabwe to assess the Scope and Impact of Operation Murambatsvina”, prepared by Mrs. Anna Tibaijuka, United Nations Special Envoy on Human Settlements Issues in Zimbabwe; July 2005. Henceforth this is referred to as “the UN report”. 14 An estimated 560,000 lost shelter, an additional more than 100,000 were arrested for vending: 2,4 million are estimated to have been indirectly affected through loss of markets for their goods, or loss of income from family members who used to send money back to rural areas: UN Report. 15 “Crooks, greedy people, opportunists and black market traders in foreign currency, fuel and basic commodities had found convenient operational bases in the informal sector. The obscene feast is over. Law and order must now prevail”: The Chronicle, 12 June 2005: Comment; “Parliament has serious business”. 16 As D Potts (op cit, note 3) points out, the enforcing of urban by-laws in Zimbabwe was not unprecedented: in the early years after independence, colonial by-laws had been enforced, including by urban demolitions on a small scale, but by the 1990s this had stopped. SPT, June 2005 explores this issue in relation to Bulawayo, where government desire to win votes in this region caused a semi-official policy change on backyard structures, legitimising them rhetorically at least, even though by-laws did not change to reflect this. But the scale and thoroughness of OM has set it apart from previous demolitions, not just in Zimbabwe, but in Africa. 15