Zimbabwe's Tipping Point

Pretoria/Brussels  |   17 Aug 2005

With its brutal slum and street clearance campaign "Murambatsvina", Zimbabwe's governance has reached a low point which it is now almost impossible for its neighbours to ignore, despite the reluctance until now of African governments and institutions to be openly critical.

Zimbabwe's Operation Murambatsvina: The Tipping Point?,* the latest report from the International Crisis Group, examines the campaign and its impact against the background of the country's dramatic economic and political deterioration, and endorses the devastating findings of the report of the UN Secretary-General's Special Envoy, Anna Tibaijuka of Tanzania.

"Murambatsvina has made even worse the desperate economic and humanitarian situation of a country that has been sliding downhill for a half-decade", says Gareth Evans, President of Crisis Group. "The UN report has exposed the regime's brutality and explicitly confronted the international community, not least elsewhere in Africa, with its responsibility to protect the people of Zimbabwe".

Operation Murambatsvina (Restore Order) cost some 700,000 Zimbabweans their homes or livelihoods or both and otherwise affected nearly a fifth of the country's population. It has returned Zimbabwe to the international spotlight, and there is much greater awareness that international action is urgent and unavoidable, not only to help deal with the humanitarian consequences of the mass evictions and forced displacement, but longer range measures to deal with Zimbabwe's fundamental governance problem.

The report argues that real reform will require efforts on three parallel tracks: the maintenance of overt international pressure, support for building internal political capacity and, above all, active regional diplomacy to facilitate political transition.

"The situation cries out for strong African diplomatic efforts - especially from South Africa, by far the most influential single government, the Southern African Development Community and the African Union", says Suliman Baldo, Director of Crisis Group's Africa Program. "Quiet diplomacy is fine in an African context, but that doesn't mean it has to be weak."