Residents’ protests violently suppressed

Refuse had not been collected for over a year. The officials explained this by saying there was no fuel for the refuse trucks, some of which didn’t even have tyres. The officials admitted they themselves did not trust the water billing system. Water meters are not read, but the water department estimate what each household should pay without checking whether that household has received any municipal water at all.

The official delegation agreed that no residents would be prosecuted for non-payment of these dues and they would not send the bailiffs to impound property from those who had run up debts. So reasonable compromises had been made, or so it seemed.

Then on New Year’s Eve, the refuse trucks appeared at Maruza, Chikwanha, unit A – but they were accompanied by a mixed squad of municipal police and ZRP who proceeded to chase, beat street vendors and to bundle them into the refuse trucks. At least one policeman was seen to be carrying a gun.

The chairman of CHIRRA, Arthur Taderera, saw a man, bleeding from several cuts and scratches, run past his house, closely followed by a man in civilian clothes who was beating him with a stick. Taderera stopped the pursuer and asked him what was going on.

He also asked where the refuse trucks got fuel from, when it wasn’t available for their normal work. The man called several policemen, who arrested Taderera saying they were charging him with obstructing the police in performing their lawful duties’ or, alternatively, conduct likely to cause a breach of the peace’. Taderera welcomed the new year in the cells, where he was held from 3pm until 2am the next morning. He did not pay any fine or make any admission of guilt.

Council officials disowned any responsibility for these activities. It is widely believed that this assault was organised by the Town Clerk, appointed by Chitungwiza’s previous administration, in order to discredit the present council. Some of the policemen said during the assault that they were sent by the GNU’.

Someone unauthorised by Taderera paid a policeman $5 to get him released and received a receipt for that sum as a fine for selling drink without a licence’. Taderera got off lightly, being a man who knows his rights, can stand up to officials and challenge them.

Some of the vendors, injured in this unwarranted and possibly illegal assault, robbed of their stock in trade and forced to flee through piles of rubbish, did not get off so lightly. Who knows what infection they may have contracted from the uncollected rubbish of Unit A, which was one of the centres of last year’s cholera epidemic?

And isn’t the ultimate misuse of refuse trucks, using them to scatter the garbage they are supposed to collect, spreading the infection they are supposed to prevent?