Mbare Report No. 13, 1 July 2005,

WHERE HAVE ALL THE CARPENTERS GONE?

People are queuing for food, for registering their names to be taken to their rural homes, for blankets and plastic sheeting. People appear to exist only in large crowds, as numbers on identity cards. If you don’t join the right queue at the right time you are ignored. There is a danger to overlook the individual with her very particular problem and peculiar way of telling her story.

Mbuya (Grannie) Chibango is left alone in this world. All her family have died, except for one daughter. She has not washed for days since she sleeps on an open ground near her old demolished home, and she has no soap. Her clothes are dirty, her hair unkempt. She has not eaten ‘sadza’, the staple diet, for days. We have organized the food distribution in an orderly fashion, one neighbourhood group after the other, but she cannot wait that long. She must be attended to now.

Hundreds are queuing in front of the municipal offices to apply for stands which government has promised to the homeless. Just for applying they have to pay $ 120 000 dollars; once they are really allocated a stand $ 500 000. Will it ever happen? Will we ever see real houses being built? And where are people going to stay in the meantime?

This morning I went to the Missionaries of Charity of Mother Theresa who gather in the rejects of society, old people without any family to support them in their remaining days. Mbuya Chakoroma is among them. Originally she lived in a nice little house on Mushongandebvu Walk in Mbare. Then her husband died, and his family sold the house, leaving her homeless. She survived in a wooden shack in “Jo-burg lines”. When her eldest son died she had no money to bury him. The corpse stayed for two days in the shack until the local church intervened and buried him. Then her other son died as well leaving two children. Now they demolished the one room she had rented and left her hungry, penniless and cold on the street. The Sisters picked her up and gave her a home. They gather in what the powers that be (“cruel and inhuman” – Zim Bishops) scatter.

Some years ago the President said some beautiful words about Mother Theresa’s charity after he had attended a Memorial Mass for her. Has he completely forgotten?

The “Operation Restore Order” leaves only chaos, and the “Operation Clean-up” leaves only rubble and dirt, uncollected refuse and heaps of debris.

I hope the UN envoy Anna Tibaijuka sees all this.

What she cannot see because it has disappeared without a trace is the Koefman open air carpentry workshop on the corner Machingura Street/Harare Road, Mbare. For decades skilled carpenters were producing good quality furniture on this piece of open ground: wardrobes, cupboards, kitchen units, chairs, tables. And coffins. (Signs advertising “Coffins for Sale” were up at every street corner, and there was a ready market for them. AIDS made sure of that).

Now Koefman’s has been buried as well, a victim of state terrorism.

Where have all the carpenters gone? How will they survive? Making coffins in their bedrooms, so the police will not see them, and selling them by night? Most likely.

Oskar Wermter SJ

On Sunday Archbishop Robert Ndlovu came to give Confirmation to 160 members of our parish. His homily was a comfort (and a challenge) to me.

He said, speaking in Shona, "Christ is not far from us. He is present in the person made homeless when his/her house or shack was destroyed. He is present in everyone shivering through these cold nights, sleeping out in the open. He is present in all who are hungry and destitute." - Addressing later the parish leaders he added, "Don't think that God does not see what is going on here. When Pharao oppressed the people of Israel in Egypt, he heard their cry."
Our archbishop speaks in a quiet tone, without much rhetoric or drama.

But his words, mostly in biblical language, are clear and understood.

In the meantime our Bishops have spoken a second time condemning the war on the poor waged by the regime on the poor and powerless:
"Any claim to justify this operation in view of a desired orderly end becomes totally groundless in view of the cruel and inhumane means that have been used. People have a right to shelter and that has been deliberately destroyed in this operation without much warning."

A widow with three children who earns her living by sewing and selling things comes with a demand from the City of Harare to pay $ 500 000 for changing ownership of her property from her late mother to her; unless this is done soon she may lose her home.

Another one must raise $ 700 000 to install a new water meter and pay more than 2 million for backdated rates and especially for "penalties" unexplained what for).

A woman who made a living out of selling paraffin lost all her supplies when the police raided her house. She is left destitute. She used to be even able to give some of her time to voluntary work for an AIDS charity. Now she is in need of charity herself.

All these people and many more come to the priest in the hope he can somehow solve their problems. But he can't. Even if he dished out all the cash he can lay his hands on, what about next month and the one after? Almost everybody has been ruined. Industrious people who looked after themselves are now in need of hand-outs. This is degrading and dehumanising.

A man's home, however small and miserable, is his outer shell, it is part of himself. A woman's home (housewife, homemaker) is her life. If you destroy a home, you are assaulting the owner, his/her very person.

This has happened thousands of times in the last few weeks, is still happening daily, hourly.

Many young families found shelter in rented cottages, now destroyed.

They all have to run back to their parents and ask to be accommodated, most humiliating for young people who have just set out in life on their own.

Small family houses become overcrowded with two generations; the ensuing stress and strain does great harm to married and family life.

And there is talk that another campaign will soon be started "Murivangani?/How many are you?" when "superfluous" people w ill be thrown out, like rubbish on the rubbish dump.

Why? Why? Why? People are asking. Why this insanity?

Oskar Wermter SJ
Fr Oskar Wermter SJ
JESUIT COMMUNICATIONS

Mbare Report No 6, 8 June 2005

Mbare Parish is distributing food, donated by a concerned organisation, to the homeless, still sleeping on the streets, but huge crowds are overwhelming the priest and his helper, the assistant for social and charitable work in the parish.

A woman rendered homeless by "Murambatsvina" ('doing away with the dirt' campaign) has taken refuge with a relation in Rugare, her very sick husband - you guess what disease! - is in Epworth, her three children are staying with other relations in Dzivaresekwa, but they should be in school in Mbare. This madness is not just destroying houses, it is destroying homes and families.

Three women with between them eleven children, all of them of Malawian origin, are still sleeping in the open, next to Stoddard Hall. They have absolutely nowhere to go. I told them they could come to the Church to use the toilets and shower facilities and fetch water. They were in the crowd queuing for food at Old St Peter's.

Could we get tents and give people some shelter that way? All people in Mbare I mentioned this idea to were unanimous: the police will not allow it.

A children's home in the suburbs was visited this morning: we are going to come and destroy your chicken run and green house (part of a thriving self-help scheme). The director is now frantrically trying to mobilize support against the destruction.

I visited an old couple. He is sickly and frail. They used to pay their electricity bill, water, rates etc from the income they got from renting out a couple of rooms to lodgers. These rooms are no longer there. They have been flattened. There is only the rubble left. It is sickening.

Oskar Wermter SJ

Fr Oskar Wermter SJ
JESUIT COMMUNICATIONS