[People need to learn to understand the deceptiveness of our Socialists. Mugabe portrayed this as a “clean up” – but it really was an attack on Blacks who supported his opposition. They are excellent at “marketing” the things they are doing. But how they “market” it and portray it in the Media does not match up with its real purpose. It was not a “clean up” – it was punishment. I wrote a lot about this concept, in my book, Government by Deception. Jan]

A DISTRAUGHT Dumi Ngorima agonises over his next move while seated on a pile of rubble in one corner of shanty Mbare high-density suburb – vestiges of a once-thriving backyard enterprise razed to the ground in the government”s ongoing clean up campaign.

Ngorima”s only source of comfort, if any, is the flimsy strength that comes from numbers as nearly 200 000 poor families have been affected by the blitz on informal traders.

“We have been moved 20 steps backwards and none forward,” lamented the 40-year-old carpenter whose family of four needed to make a quick decision – either to go back to their rural home or look for alternative accommodation after their “cottage” was demolished in the crackdown.

The government-sponsored clean-up exercise has worsened an already bad operating environment for an informal sector plagued by shortages of fuel and foreign currency as well as resurgent inflation, which reached 144.4 percent last month.

Before the campaign, described by a United Nations official as a new form of apartheid, the informal sector had contributed enormously to Zimbabwe”s teetering economy in the form of jobs and disposable incomes in a country where unemployment has scaled past 70 percent.

With very little prospects for school leavers and hordes of able-bodied men and women thrown out of formal employment through sector-wide retrenchments, the informal sector had become a fashionable way to make a living.

It is estimated that 700 000 school leavers enter the labour market each year – competing for 40 000 jobs, a figure widely believed to be exaggerated. Those who fail to make the grade have had to go one way – they have to depend on home-based income generating activities.

Nearly four million people are now in informal employment, accounting for 25 percent of Zimbabwe”s gross domestic product, according to the International Labour Organisation. This figure is by far greater than the estimated 1.3 million people in formal employment.

In short, the informal sector that, according to the government, had become synonymous with all forms of criminal activity had become the backbone of the country”s enfeebled agro-based economy, which took a nasty knock after veterans of the liberation struggle seized land in 2000.

“We had endured the hardships: failure to get employment plus the high cost of living. Although we had denied them (government) the urban vote, we had opted to soldier on in our own modest ways, while letting them rule until kingdom come. But now what do they expect us to do after destroying our livelihood?” asked Ngorima.

As an afterthought, Local Government Minister Ignatius Chombo unveiled a $300 billion facility for the construction of market stalls and factory shells to accommodate the affected informal traders. But the government has acknowledged not everyone will find space on the new complexes.

Meanwhile, the few who can be accommodated may not have the seed capital to relaunch their enterprises because law enforcement agencies confiscated their stock and work in progress during the clean-up raids.

“What will they be doing between now and the time they will get into the new structures?” asked Farai Dyirakumunda, a local economic commentator, adding it would be difficult for the government to reorganise the informal sector when the economy was sliding into the abyss.

“The fact that they were left for so long without any action implied acceptance, though illegal,” Dyirakumunda added.

The government has defended the blitz, saying it was intended to flush out illegal dealers fuelling parallel market activities that it alleged posed the biggest threat to the country”s economic survival.

Godfrey Kanyenze, a local labour economist, said this week that the government had put the cart before the horses and now faced an even greater human catastrophe at a time it was least prepared to spend on unbudgeted items.

He said politicians were now removed from the people and cared less about implementing ideas without consulting their constituencies.

Kanyenze, pointing out the government should have consulted the various constituencies before embarking on the exercise, said the blitz had virtually killed the informal sector, a potential footbridge towards micro and small-scale enterprises.

“It means people are now going straight into abject poverty. What we used to have was veiled poverty but now it will be real naked suffering where you see unemployment and homelessness openly with no alternative sources of income. At the same time, these people need to survive and cannot wait for assistance from well-wishers and so crime and prostitution might be on the rise,” said Kenyenze.

“We also need social workers and psychologists to deal with the tension and pressures created by this exercise so that those affected can be helped to normalise. The problem with these people is that they become too suspicious and put everyone in danger. Social institutions should now come forward,” he said.

The labour economist said various ways – such as creating value channels linking the sector to the formal economy – could have been considered to formalise the sector instead of outright destruction.

A number of informal traders, particularly those who were making furniture, could have been easily formalised into the mainstream economy, he said.

“We should have been selective because outright destruction like we have done ends up destroying even the positive aspects of it and stigmatising people. We need a systematic strategy that upholds the positive side so that it starts contributing to the fiscus,” he added. “It is also a violation of human rights. You cannot destroy their shacks unless you have found alternative accommodation for them.”

In Latin America, the urban informal sector was the primary job generator in the 1990s, with an average of six out of every 10 new jobs being created by micro-enterprises, own account workers and domestic services.

Informal sector employment grew by 3.9 percent per annum in the region, while formal sector employment grew by only 2.1 percent.

Source: AllAfrica.Com
URL: http://allafrica.com/stories/200506160026.htm…br>