Monster of the moment

Zimbabwe is being hypocritically vilified by the west for forced slum clearances that are routine throughout the developing world.

For a month now, the BBC, CNN, ITV and others have been reporting what has been portrayed as one of the greatest humanitarian and human rights disasters in years.

At least 200,000 people - sometimes this figure grows to 250,000 or even 300,000 - are said to have been forcibly evicted from slum areas of Harare in Zimbabwe. The figure peaked last week at 1.5 million, but yesterday the BBC reckoned that bulldozers were now "crashing through the homes of 500,000 people".

In fact, only about 1.2 million people live in Harare and no one is suggesting that half the population has fled in terror or that most of the city has been wrecked. So where are all these allegedly terrorised people? A few thousand have been filmed in makeshift camps but not many more. Who is trying to count the numbers? They are almost always attributed to an unnamed person in an unnamed UN agency. But read the only UN statement on the evictions and it says nothing of 200,000 people.

The evictions - which are clearly happening on a wide scale - have been seized on by the west, and the former colonial power Britain in particular, as another reason to demonise President Mugabe and further humiliate long-suffering Zimbabwe. It's open season on the Harare regime and it appears that anyone can say anything they like without recourse to accuracy or reality. Whipped into a frenzy of hypocritical outrage, the EU, Britain and the US, as well as the World Bank - all of which have been responsible for millions of evictions in Africa and elsewhere as conditions of infrastructure projects - have rushed to condemn the "atrocities".

The vilification of Mugabe is now out of control. The UN security council and the G8 have been asked to debate the evictions, and Mugabe is being compared to Pol Pot in Cambodia. Meanwhile, the evictions are mentioned in the same breath as the genocide in Rwanda and ethnic cleansing in the Balkans - although perhaps only three people have so far accidentally died. Only at the very end of some reports is it said that the Harare city authority's stated reason for the evictions is to build better, legal houses for 150,000 people.

Perspective is needed. The summary removal of people at gunpoint from their homes is indefensible, almost certainly unnecessary, and probably economically counter-productive, but it is not unusual in the developing world. Every year millions of poor people are evicted to make way for tourism, dams, roads and airports, for events like the Olympics, and for the gentrification and beautification of cities, national parks and urban redevelopments.

Nor is it new. Forced evictions, brutal land grabs and slum clearances were all used by Britain's own rulers in the past to enlarge their estates, build bigger, more modern cities, construct reservoirs, make way for railways and lay out fine parks and fashionable areas for the newly rich to live. Rapidly developing countries are now doing the same as the rich world did during its own industrial and urban development.

The difference is mostly in numbers. According to UN-Habitat, the Nairobi-based agency that concerns itself with the urban environment, hundreds of millions of the world's poor are technically illegal squatters living in slum communities like those in Harare, liable to be moved on by private landowners or by governments. In the past five years, slum clearance programmes have forced more than 150,000 people out of their homes in Delhi; 300,000 people were evicted to make way for Olympic sites in Beijing; 100,000 were moved on in Jakarta; 250,000 were forced out of dam sites in India; and as many as a million in Lagos and Port Harcourt in Nigeria. There are many more.

Yet those who like to call themselves "the international community" say nothing about these mass evictions and the world's press has been mostly silent. For the World Bank to condemn the Zimbabwean evictions was particularly rich. According to its own calculations, the bank has funded projects that have required the eviction of at least 10 million people.

So why are the Harare slum clearances so different? As international monster of the moment, Mugabe is unacceptable to Britain and the west mainly because he has chosen to evict whites and redistribute land grabbed in colonial times. The fact that the African Union and other African leaders are not prepared to condemn him for the Harare evictions reflects the fact that they, too, recognise the injustice of the colonial land ownership inheritance and do not want to see Africa bullied again by the west.

But there may be another reason why African leaders have not condemned the evictions. Urbanisation is overwhelming most African cities, which have been flooded by impoverished people forced off the land. According to the UN's 2003 study of urbanisation and slums, the driving force behind the slums of Africa and Asia is not bad governance or tyrants, but laissez-faire globalisation, the tearing down of trade barriers, the privatisation of national economies, structural adjustment programmes imposed on indebted countries by the IMF, and the lowering of tariffs promoted by the World Trade Organisation.

Like every city in the world that has tried to clear its slums, Harare will find that history repeats itself. This year, Zimbabwe faces massive food shortages that will force more of the urban poor into destitution and drive yet more people off the land into the cities to look for work. The poor, punished for their poverty rather than for voting one way or another, will become poorer and the shacks and shelters so brutally pulled down in the past month will just go up somewhere else.

However, an alternative to forced evictions is emerging right under Mugabe's nose. Last year, 250 homeless Zimbabweans, members of the Federation of Slum and Shackdwellers, negotiated the provision of land from the city authority. They have now planned the layout of their community, worked out the costs of the homes and are ready to build. Where are they? Harare.

By John Vidal posted 3 July 05

Wolfowitz's World Bank nomination worries Oxfam

The head of Oxfam in Australia has raised concerns about the nomination of US Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz as the next head of the World Bank.

Mr Wolfowitz, 61, was one of the key architects of the Iraq war.

His name has been put forward by US President George W Bush, who has already begun telephoning world leaders to lobby support for Mr Wolfowitz.

But Oxfam's Andrew Hewitt says the process of appointment should be more open.

"We believe there should be a much more democratic, a much more open and transparent process," he said.

"That may mean that we get someone who's more in tune with the needs of developing countries than what we suspect Mr Wolfowitz is."

Among other reaction, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Rodrigo Rato, says he would look forward to working with Mr Wolfowitz?

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw says Mr Wolfowitz is experienced and distinguished internationally?

Yeah, as a war criminal! Great!

By Just Us 17 March 05

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By End The Occupations 19 November 04

Sydney Social Forum Oct 24-26

The Sydney Social Forum is to take place om October 24-26. Some of you may see this an opportunity to hold a workshop on your area of concern. I encourage everyone to participate. This is a great opportunity to learn about, share, and discuss a broad spectrum of issues that directly or indirectly affect us.

As a contact for your local Peace Group, we hope that you are in a position to help publicise and contribute to the second Sydney Social Forum (SSF), which is being held on October 24-26 at the University of Technology, Sydney.

Taking its inspiration from the World Social Forum which took place this year in Porto Alegre, Brazil, the Sydney Social Forum is an open series of meetings, workshops and discussions promoting peace, social justice and environmental sustainability.

In September 2002 the first Sydney Social Forum (SSF) was held, attracting over 400 people, the support of 35 organisations and over 70 workshops covering a broad range of topics and issues. Since that time, a number of events have made the need for collaboration and discussion even more urgent.

The war on Iraq has signalled an intensifying permanent war on the world's poor, adding more open unilateral military aggression to existing neo-liberal offensives conducted through organisations like the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and World Trade Organisation.

In Australia, the Howard government's enthusiastic support for US foreign policy has been accompanied by increasing attacks on public health care and higher education, the continuation of a deplorable refugee policy, and a push for wider deregulation and privatisation as part of a Free Trade Agreement with the US.

On the other side, the worldwide movement against the war in Iraq and Sydney's largest ever political demonstration in February was also a spectacular expression of opposition to corporate greed and lack of democracy.

Within this context, the SSF aims generally to promote discussion of analyses of the state of the world, visions of an alternative world and strategies to get from one to the other.

We are hoping that you can publicise the forum through your networks and, even better, that you may decide to participate in discussion and perhaps even hold a workshop at the SSF it is an open forum accessible to all who wish to contribute.

If you would like further information about the SSF, please check some of the details below, contact me directly or visit the SSF website: Sydney Social Forum

We hope that you can participate in this year's event and assist in promoting activity for peace and social justice in our community. Yours in the belief that another world is possible,

Vince Caughley for the Sydney Social Forum Oganising Groupe vince@sydneysocialforum.org
p 0438 800 244

PROGRAM

SYDNEY SOCIAL FORUM
24-26 October 2003
University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) Tower

Opening Session:

IS THE AMERICAN EMPIRE UNSTOPPABLE?

Globalise Peace and Global Justice
Friday 24th October 7:00pm @ Guthrie Theatre, UTS (Enter off Harris Street) Entry $8/$5 (free for SSF registrants) The faltering operation in Iraq, the collapse of the Cancun WTO negotiations, increasing international resistance is the Empire beginning to crack? With international speakers:

DAVID BARSAMIAN
Award-winning director of Alternative Radio in the US. David has co-authored a number of books with eminent scholars such as Noam Chomsky, Edward Said and Arundhati Roy.

NICOLA BULLARD
Deputy-director of Focus on the Global South. Nicola is co- author along with Walden Bello of "Global Finance: New Thinking on Regulating Speculative Capital Markets".

ARIEL GUIDES
Representative from BMP (Solidarity of Filipino Workers), the largest trade union congress in the Philippines, and head of the Freedom from Hunger Coalition in Negros, covering 22,000 sugarworkers across 12 cities and towns.

For registration and programme information, visit

Sydney Social Forum

By Marlene Obeid posted 21 Oct 03

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