MDC: it warned people that the state has ultimate power even in towns where there are opposition mayors and MPs. • Inter Ministerial Committees (IMCs): ZANU PF control has been consolidated through the setting up of IMCs to oversee OGHK. This has given government significant power in previously MDC-run urban areas; the IMCs are made up of nine government ministries including police, army and CIO, and are headed countrywide by senior army officials. The IMCs have usurped the powers that used to reside in local authorities with regard to all OGHK activities including building and allocation of housing. The IMCs are also in control of vetting and issuing of licences to informal traders. • Patronage: the fact that ZANU PF-dominated, militarised IMCs are now effectively in charge of deciding who will have the right to vend and who will have the right to OGHK houses, has opened the door to patronage. We predicted in Discarding the Filth that the government would use this opportunity to parcel out the informal sector to its supporters. There is evidence one year on that this has indeed been the case. Who was responsible? According to the UN report, neither the collective cabinet nor the ZANU PF politburo formally authorised the demolitions; several ministers were caught by surprise by events. The Special Envoy concluded that OM was “implemented by over zealous officials, each with their own agendas”.20 But it is impossible that such a sustained assault on all towns of the nation, involving thousands of police and army, could not have occurred without authorisation at the highest level. However, as the government has ignored all the recommendations of the UN report, including the recommendation that those responsible should be prosecuted, to date no light has been shed on which branches and ministries of government came up with the master plan, or the exact process by which it was decentralised and put into motion. While the demolitions rolled out with apparent precision nationwide, there was also an element of the ad hoc about them: it is possible that they developed a dynamic of their own and went far beyond what its engineers had originally envisaged.21 It remains a necessity for the issue of responsibility to be clarified. The recommendations of the UN Report and others that those individuals responsible be prosecuted, and that those affected be compensated, need to be enacted. The nation has a right to know why and at whose commands over two million people had their homes and livelihoods destroyed. 20 Ibid, pp 76-77. For example, entire settlements such as White Cliff Farm, built by government supporters in peri-urban Harare were not spared. International Crisis Group, Zimbabwe’s Operation Murambatsvina: the tipping point?, August 2005, suggests the demolitions assumed their own momentum at some point: page 5. Tibaijuka (op cit) refers to almost everyone she spoke to denying responsibility: everyone was just following orders – but whose? 21 17