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Urban Displacements in Zimbabwe at a time of Fear and Loathing: Forced Migration during Operation Murambatsvina (Operation 'Clear Out the Filth') in 2005

Deborah Potts, Cities Research Group, Geography Department, King's College London

In May 2005 the ZANU (PF) government of Zimbabwe began a concerted, well planned and prolonged attack on its urban poor and their precarious livelihoods. At the end of the campaign it was widely reported that 650,000-700,000 urban people had lost their homes and/or their informal sector livelihoods. One aspect of the operation was a clearly stated and determined effort to displace the homeless to rural areas. This ties in with highly negative political and cultural arguments made by the Zimbabwean government since 2000 about 'urban' people in that country which try to cast them as 'other' or 'aliens' in the sense that only people with rural roots are perceived as 'true' Zimbabweans. As argued by Phineas Chihota, Deputy Minister of Industry and International Trade in Parliament on 23 June 2005, "It is common cause that the definition of an indigenous person is one who has a rural home allocated to him by virtue of being indigenousŠ.." While it is easy to disprove such arguments, they nonetheless have been incorporated into the justifications for a policy which has had serious outcomes in terms of displaced peoples and increased livelihood vulnerability. At the same time the importance of urban migrants' landholdings and rural assets for their economic security in Africa is significant. This paper discusses the causes and effects of the displacements under Operation Murambatsvina, and attempts to analyse these events and population movements in relation to broader trends in migration and urbanization processes in contemporary sub-Saharan Africa.