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Post by Moses on Jun 24, 2005 19:55:22 GMT -5
Why Africa won't condemn Zimbabwe blitz By Elizabeth Blunt BBC News Foreign ministers from the G8 grouping of the world's richest and most powerful countries have called on other African leaders to denounce the forced evictions which are causing so much suffering in Zimbabwe. Yet many of those other African governments have overseen similar brutal evictions in their own countries, and yet have suffered very little outside criticism. The sad truth is that what is going on in Zimbabwe at the moment is not at all unusual. From one end of Africa to the other, governments have set about slum clearance schemes without any consideration for the people who live there, or any sense of responsibility for what happens to them afterwards. Unsanitary Nigeria, the current chair of the African Union, was the scene of a huge mass eviction in 1990, when around 300,000 people were bulldozed out of the Maroko neighbourhood in Lagos in a single week to make way for corporate office buildings and executive villas. Soldiers cleared the Washington area of Abidjan in Ivory Coast at gunpoint in 2002, turning people out of their homes, sometimes with less than an hour's notice. Hundreds of families in Bonaberi area of Douala in Cameroon, lost their homes in similar purges. In every case it was absolutely true that the areas were unsanitary, and the houses built without permission, yet there was never any sense that these exercises were being carried out to give residents a better place to live. The evicted families inevitably were driven further to the margins and ended up living in even worse conditions. The victims of the Zimbabwe eviction are lucky that because of the political campaign being run against President Robert Mugabe, both inside and outside the country, there are well-organised and well-funded people calling attention to their plight. But it seems unlikely that Africa's other leaders will sympathise with the displaced rather than with a fellow president cleaning up his country's city, and will speak out on their behalf.
Story from BBC NEWS: news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/africa/4619513.stmPublished: 2005/06/24 13:29:57 GMT © BBC MMV
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Post by Moses on Jun 24, 2005 19:57:31 GMT -5
Before and after images show shanty town clearance in a suburb of Harare.
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Post by Moses on Jun 24, 2005 20:06:52 GMT -5
Zimbabwe's human tragedy By Alastair Leithead BBC News, Zimbabwe Lavender and Herbert Nyika tidied a small earth grave of their two-year-old daughter Charmaine. Her mother adjusted the small cross next to the scrap metal headstone and remembered the day that police came with bulldozers and destroyed their home. "I didn't even have time to bring Charmaine to safety," she told me. "She was killed when the walls collapsed on top of her." Lavender Nyika's daughter was one of at least three to have died It is like a scene from a natural disaster Alastair Leithead [/hr] A piece of red plastic flaps in the wind outside the Nyika's home - a symbol of loss in the family. All that remains of the house itself is the foundations and a pile of rubble. At least two other children have also been killed. 'Destitute and desperate' Charmaine's family blame the government, saying it is they who tell the police to continue the destruction. A conservative estimate from the UN puts the number of displaced people at 275,000, but it appears to be a lot more than that on the ground. Riot police are systematically going from suburb to suburb in the towns and cities, destroying the homes of the poorest Zimbabweans and leaving them destitute and desperate. But these are not all illegal or makeshift settlements - many are brick and concrete houses and business that were built during Zimbabwe's colonial days. In Bulawayo, the church halls are full of the newly homeless. "They came to my home and they burned it down," one man told me as he stirred a pot of bubbling maize meal. "They say they have a strategy, they say they are clearing up the towns." Those who made it to refuge in church grounds are the lucky ones. The destruction is now taking place on such a scale that the police cannot keep up. In some cases they are forcing people to demolish their own homes, or charging them a fee to do it. Those who choose to do it themselves at least have one last opportunity to salvage some meagre possessions or a piece of roofing to take with them as they are displaced. Displacement camps Thousands are in camps with no sanitation, water or foodOutside Harare, thousands of people have been dumped on a farm by the government and left to fend for themselves without clean water, food or sanitation. At one of the camps, Caledonia Farm, intelligence agents mingled among the dispossessed. The entrance was blocked by police, forcing us to sneak in through the bush to see the conditions there. People arranged what was left of their possessions around them as though they still had a home, taking shelter under a few sheets and blankets. Elsewhere, others sleep in the open or try to go out to their extended families in rural areas. But a lack of fuel in some places makes that increasingly difficult; buses stand in petrol queues while the people sleep in the bitter cold of Zimbabwe's winter. It is like a scene from a natural disaster, but the Zimbabwean government is doing this to its own people. But for what purpose? Some believe the campaign is meant as punishment to the urban voters who sided with the opposition; others say it is to disperse an angry poor population before thoughts of revolution can surface from within it. Others see a longer term purpose of creating a new class of rural poor, dependent on government aid and ultimately prepared to support the government because of that aid. Whatever the government's motivation, this is a human tragedy - and it gets worse by the day.
Story from BBC NEWS: news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/africa/4618747.stmPublished: 2005/06/24 11:36:35 GMT © BBC MMV
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Post by Moses on Jun 24, 2005 20:19:50 GMT -5
Related: Supreme Court backs municipal land grabs
Justices affirm property seizures for private developmentBy Bill Mears CNN Washington Bureau
Friday, June 24, 2005; Posted: 7:54 p.m. EDT (23:54 GMT) WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In a victory for cities, a divided Supreme Court concluded Thursday that local governments have the authority to seize private land and turn the property over to private developers for economic development.Government's authority to condemn land for public use traditionally has been used to eliminate slums or build highways, schools and other public works. But Tuesday's 5-4 ruling found that local officials can use their "eminent domain" power to condemn homes in a working-class neighborhood for private development in hopes of boosting tax revenue and improving the local economy. Connecticut caseThe case pitted the city of New London, Connecticut, against homeowner Susette Kelo and six other families who were trying to keep the municipality from condemning their homes for use as part of a redevelopment project, centered around a $270 million global research facility built by the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer.Kelo and her neighbors filed suit, arguing their property rights were being violated by well-connected developers. But the Supreme Court found the city could go forward with the project and condemn the homes. "Promoting economic development is a traditional and long-accepted function of government," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority.O'Connor: Court oversteppedBut writing for the dissenters, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote that the court overstepped its authority. "The court today significantly expands the meaning of public use," O'Connor wrote. "It holds that the sovereign may take private property currently put to ordinary private use, and give it over for new, ordinary private use."Scott Bullock, the homeowners' lawyer, said, "Every home, church or corner store" would be vulnerable to being replaced by commercial development under the ruling, "since they produce more tax revenue." He said a very high standard should be used when applying eminent domain since "every city has problems and wants more tax revenues."Stevens concluded that the city's plan "unquestionably serves a public purpose" and the majority appeared to defer to the judgment of local officials over the courts to navigate that standard. "The city has carefully formulated an economic development plan that it believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community, including -- but by no means limited to -- new jobs and increased tax revenue," he wrote. Cities hail the decisionThe National League of Cities hailed the decision, saying it would allow cities to keep "one of their most effective tools for ensuring economic development." "Eminent domain is not a power to be used lightly," Washington, D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams, the group's president, [And one of the worst and in the pocket of the real estate developers] said in a written statement. "We must be sensitive to those who may be displaced. However, as part of a legislative process, with citizen input and discussion, it is one of the most powerful tools city officials have to rejuvenate their neighborhoods." The case stems from New London's 2000 plan to redevelop 90 acres of the Fort Trumball neighborhood. The city council transferred eminent domain power to the New London Development Corporation, a private, non-profit group of citizens, business owners and community leaders.
The company wants to build a conference center, hotel complex, offices, condominiums and, eventually, an aquarium in New London, located about 125 miles east of New York.
Residents were ordered out of their homes in 2000, but several rejected the city's compensation package and fought the move in court.
"There's no amount of money that can compensate for what the other side of that coin would be," said Matt Dery, who said his family has lived in Fort Trumball for a century. "Truly, my parents don't want to wake up rich ... they just want to wake up tomorrow where they live."
'Blow to homeowners'
The libertarian Cato Institute, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief on Kelo's behalf, called the decision a "blow to homeowners and small business people."
"With today's decision, no one's property is safe, since any time a government official thinks someone else can make better use of your property than you're doing, he can order it condemned and transferred," Roger Pilon, the group's director of constitutional studies, said in a written statement.
Wesley Horton, an attorney for New London, said the city understands the situation the homeowners face, "but you have to remember that can happen if there was a road going in, or a school. It doesn't make any difference what type of condemnation there is.
"Obviously that's a sad situation, there's no question about it," he said. "But you can't have one rule for roads and another rule for blight and a third rule for economic development. It's all the same thing." [!!!!!]
Joining Stevens in the majority were justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter and Anthony Kennedy. Chief Justice William Rehnquist, and justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas joined O'Connor's dissent.
In a concurring opinion, Thomas predicted the ruling would cause long-term problems.
"The consequence of today's decision are not difficult to predict, and promise to be harmful," he wrote. "So-called 'urban renewal' programs provide some compensation for the properties they take, but no compensation is possible for the subjective value of these lands to the individuals displaced and the indignity inflicted by uprooting them from their homes."
The case is Kelo v. City of New London (04-0108).
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Post by Parenti on Jul 22, 2005 20:11:30 GMT -5
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Post by Moses on Jul 23, 2005 4:39:40 GMT -5
From the article:
Trotskyites line up behind imperialism As was to be expected, the Trotskyites have come out fully in support of imperialism on the question of Zimbabwe, as they have always done on every important issue. Their attacks on Zimbabwe are, for obvious camouflage reasons, from the 'left'. Following in the footsteps of Trotsky, his present-day followers, while serving imperialism heart and soul, accuse every progressive regime of being an agent of imperialism. Zimbabwe is no exception. The Zimbabwean Trot, Munyaradzi Gwisai, one of the leading lights of the International Socialist Organisation (ISO), spawned by the British counter-revolutionary organisation the Socialist Workers' Party, writing in a recent issue of the Trotskyite Weekly Worker, has some extremely queer things to say. At the beginning of his article, as if to show how unhinged and totally disengaged from reality he is, he attacks imperialism and its propaganda and financial arms for not denouncing the Zimbabwean government on the question of the clean-up operation! "And where", he asks, "is the West [this Trotskyite's affectionate term for the bloodthirsty imperialist countries] - the UK, USA, BBC, CNN and IMF - denouncing Mugabe, as millions suffer, as they did with the invasion of the white farms?" This moron must live in a world of make believe not to realise that imperialism has been, and is, conducting a non-stop anti-ZANU campaign for years and that the IMF cut off financial support for Zimbabwe as far back as 1999. He goes on to say that the clean-up operation is motivated by two factors. The first is to send a clear message "…to the global capitalist class that the political elites of ZANU-PF have turned a new leaf and are now ready and prepared to defend and advance the interests of capitalist private property at all costs … [and] destroying ZANU-PF's radical base, which spearheaded the previous 'lawlessness', or jamabanja, to save ZANU from imminent defeat by the MDC in 2000". The second is to deal "…a decisive pre-emptive blow against all lingering and potential centres of resistance amongst the urban poor, workers, informal traders, war veterans and peasants before Gono (governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe) unleashes the promised full 'pain' of his 'turnaround programme', i.e., an ESAP harsher than the original one …" [our emphasis]. The use of the word 'now' in the last but one paragraph above is new, for Mr Gwisai has been saying the same thing for years as a cover and an excuse for his membership of the MDC which was created, and supplied with ample funds and generous media support, precisely to "defend and advance the interests of capitalist private property at all costs" - especially to defend the interests of imperialism. ZANU was saved from defeat at the hands of the MDC solely because of the former's support among the masses at a time when Mr Gwisai and his ISO, as an integral constituent of the MDC, were busy acting as stooges and battering rams of imperialism to bring down the ZANU-PF government. In any case, if ZANU-PF is seriously sending a signal to imperialism that it (ZANU) is ready to advance the interests of "capitalist private property" and defend that which is dear to the "global capitalist class", then the latter must be blind, deaf, dumb and stupid not to realise it, for it is still carrying on with its anti-ZANU propaganda campaign in terms harsher and more strident than ever before. No! This cannot be, and is not, true. Imperialism is fully aware of who defends and who opposes its interests. It has a very well-developed sense of its self interest. It is, therefore, fully capable of changing its propaganda tune at literally the drop of a hat. Should ZANU-PF and President Mugabe be guilty of the accusations levelled against them by Mr Gwisai, they would instantly be presented in the imperialist press as "wise" and "pragmatic" practitioners of 'democracy', the 'rule of law' and 'good governance'. Because this is not the case, they continue to be fiercely denounced. It is our Trot who has got it wrong, or, and this is more likely, he is uttering a deliberate lie to cover his own counter-revolutionary theory and practice. We do not know whether the government of Zimbabwe intends to re-engage with the IMF or not. It may very well do so. But if it does, it would be doing so from a position of relative strength after settling in a revolutionary way the land question.
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Post by Parenti on Nov 19, 2007 22:01:13 GMT -5
You should read Strange Liberators by Greg Elich which contains a lot of good information about the true situation in Zimbabwe.
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