Poverty on Top of Poverty
In May 2005, shortly after Zimbabwean elections had, once again, resulted in a questionable narrow “win” for Robert Mugabe’s ZanuPF, Operation Murambatsvina was launched. Ostensibly an urban clean-up campaign, Murambatsvina was widely viewed as a brutal weapon employed by government to break the backbone of opposition MDC support. Settlements, even those with erstwhile local government approval were bulldozed to the ground. Small scale industry and informal traders were burnt out. Thousands of urban families across Zimbabwe were rendered homeless, jobless – hopeless.
Five years after Operation Murambatsvina – and 18 months after the inclusive government of Zimbabwe came into being, this film looks at what has happened to the victims of 2005.
Hopley Farm is a large tract of land on the outskirts of Harare, where the government dumped thousands of Murambatsvina victims in 2005. They were promised new homes, a developed infrastructure and a better life. 5 years later, what has transpired in Hopley mirrors the fate of the hundreds of thousands of IDP’s across the country.
