Now that the Government is once again cracking down on informal traders and structures under Operation Chenesa, commentators have raised concerns it is repeating a key failure of Operation Murambatsvina in 2005, a campaign that, according to a UN investigation, left about 700 000 people without homes, livelihoods or both while targeting the visible symptoms of economic hardship without addressing the deeper causes of informality, unemployment and poverty.
Commentators say the comparison between Murambatsvina in 2005 and Chenesa in 2026 are real and not just rhetorical.
In 2005, in her landmark report as UN Special Envoy on Human Settlements Issues, Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka concluded Operation Murambatsvina was “a policy failure of the Government of Zimbabwe to come to terms with rapid urbanisation, its chaotic manifestations, and people’s ‘Right to the City.’”
She said the government had failed to produce any written documentation showing the operation was planned, as evictions took place before alternatives could be provided, violating both national and international law.
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Tibaijuka’s strongest recommendation was “the culprits who have caused this man-made disaster be brought to justice under Zimbabwean national laws”.
However no one has ever been brought to justice.
Now, under the banner of Operation Chenesa, launched on 9 September 2026, authorities have deployed at least 300 municipal police officers across Harare and other cities, armed with bulldozers and a seven-day ultimatum for illegal vendors to vacate undesignated areas.
The government framed Operation Chenesa as a necessary measure to “restore public safety, environmental integrity, order, and sustainable urban development,” with the Ministry of Local Government and Public Works reporting that by 21 September 2026, 2 475 illegal businesses have been affected and 1 137 illegal structures removed.
On September 21 alone, 255 businesses were affected, including 201 vending operations, 20 clothes-selling businesses, 11 snooker businesses, four furniture businesses, four tyre businesses and a car wash. A further 54 structures were removed.
The government has also announced a 60-day formalisation programme intended to bring informal traders into the regulated economy and accelerate the development and upgrading of vending infrastructure.
However, the comparison with 2005 is increasingly difficult to avoid.
On May 19, 2005, the government launched Operation Murambatsvina or Operation Restore Order.
Beginning in Harare, Operation Murambatsvina rapidly spread nationwide, involving the demolition of homes, business premises and vending sites.
Tibaijuka, was appointed by then Secretary-General Kofi Annan to investigate its scope and impact. Her fact-finding mission visited Zimbabwe from June 25 to July 8, 2005.
Her report estimated about 700 000 people lost their homes, livelihoods or both, while a further 2.4 million people were indirectly affected.
Hundreds of thousands of people were left without adequate shelter, food, water, sanitation and healthcare, while education of thousands of children were disrupted including cutting vulnerable people off from medical services.
The report acknowledged that the government’s stated objective, enforcing planning regulations, removing illegal structures and creating orderly cities, could correspond with legitimate urban-development goals.
Tibaijuka’s report concluded the manner in which Operation Murambatsvina was implemented had turned those objectives into something much more destructive.
Operation Murambatsvina, she wrote, was carried out in an “unplanned and over-zealous manner”, unleashing “chaos and untold human suffering”.
The UN assessment went beyond the immediate humanitarian consequences. It argued the crisis was rooted in Zimbabwe’s failure to respond adequately to rapid urbanisation and economic decline.
Tibaijuka also linked the crisis to weak governance, overlapping responsibilities between central and local government, disregard for the rule of law and an apparent indifference to human suffering.
Commentators said that distinction is important to the current debate because the question is not whether Zimbabwean cities should be clean, orderly and properly planned, but as the UN report asked, what happens when enforcement becomes the principal response to an economic and housing crisis
The current Operation Chenesa campaign has been presented as an urban management and enforcement programme targeting vending and structures operating in undesignated areas.
During its September 9 launch, authorities said no wares or personal belongings would be confiscated during the initial operation and stressed a humane approach.
The government also indicated moving towards formalisation, suggesting the present policy is not about removal.
However commentators said the similarities between Operation Chenesa and Murambatsvina are strong enough to deserve a closer look.
Both campaigns have been framed around cleaning up cities, restoring order and enforcing municipal regulations.
Both have focused heavily on informal economic activity and structures regarded as illegal or unauthorised and in both cases, the informal economy exists within a broader context of economic hardship.
Lawyer and activist, Chiedza Mlingwa, argued that vending should be understood as an economic response to constrained choices rather than simply a lifestyle preference.
“When formal employment opportunities are inadequate, when wages are insufficient and household obligations continue to grow, vending becomes one of the few immediately accessible means through which a person can generate income, feed a family, pay rent, and send children to school,” she said at a recent SAPES Policy Dialogue.
Mlingwa raised a policy question that if informal livelihoods are removed, what replaces them.
The UN report confronted precisely that question in 2005.
Tibaijuka recommended that displaced people should have access to alternative housing and sites for small-scale income-generating activities.
Tibaijuka called for properly surveyed plots, secure tenure, appropriate planning standards, designated markets and an effective licensing system that protected traders’ rights.
She also recommended that affected communities be involved in reconstruction and livelihood-restoration plans.
Her emphasis was not simply on stopping illegal activity but creating a viable legal alternative.
This is where the historical comparison becomes more than a rhetorical warning and Mlingwa said the fundamental lesson of Murambatsvina was destroying informal businesses did not eliminate unemployment or poverty.
“The fact that a particular trading location is unauthorised does not make the underlying socioeconomic vulnerability disappear when the trader is removed. It just shifts it,” she said, noting vendors may operate from unauthorised pavements but relying on that activity for survival.
Mlingwa questioned whether Zimbabwe has learnt the lessons from 2005.
“The comparison between Operation Murambatsvina of 2005 and the recently announced Operation Chinesa, for me, raises an important question about the country’s approach to informality,” she said.
“Are we addressing the underlying causes of urban informality or merely attempting to make informality less visible? What makes Murambatsvina particularly relevant to the present debate is that informal economic activity was not incidental to the operation.”
The most striking element of the 2005 report was Tibaijuka also called for accountability, noting the government had been collectively responsible for what happened.
Tibaijuka also concluded that evidence suggested Operation Murambatsvina had been based on improper advice from some of its architects.
Her report recommended that those responsible should be held accountable under Zimbabwean law and people whose property had been unlawfully destroyed should receive redress.
Tibaijuka’s report also urged the government to stop further demolitions and displacements, establish a humanitarian response framework and review planning laws to reflect the realities of poor urban residents.
On human rights, Tibaijuka recorded submissions arguing that the forcible uprooting of hundreds of thousands of people met the criteria of a “crime against humanity” under Article 7 of the Rome Statute.
Although Tibaijuka did not definitively conclude that Murambatsvina constituted a crime against humanity, her preliminary legal assessment based on the available evidence, stated such a case would be difficult to sustain and that a prolonged international argument over the Rome Statute could distract from the immediate humanitarian crisis.
Nevertheless, Tibaijuka’s recommendation was clear on accountability: those responsible for the man-made disaster should be brought to justice under Zimbabwean national law.
That distinction matters because it noted that state power must operate within the law and urban reform cannot be separated from human rights, livelihoods and accountability.
Mlingwa similarly argued Zimbabwe cannot create an economic environment in which citizens increasingly depend on informal livelihoods and then punish them for operating informally.
“The underlying policy logic of removing informal livelihoods from urban spaces risks reproducing some of the same structural problems that characterised Murambatsvina,” she said, adding enforcement needs to come with the necessary economic, housing and planning reforms to make compliance possible.
Her sentiments were also part of Tibaijuka’s recommendations in 2005.
Tibaijuka argued Zimbabwe’s humanitarian crisis was not caused by war but by policy failure in responding to urbanisation and economic decline.
She called for planning laws to be reviewed, local authorities empowered, secure tenure expanded, informal businesses accommodated through regulated markets and affected communities involved in planning.
Another political analyst, Mxolisi Ncube said Zimbabwe’s challenge was not to make its cities cleaner but to make sure people removed from pavements have somewhere economically viable to go.
“If informal traders are simply displaced from one location to another, the underlying problem remains,” he said.
“If people are provided with affordable, accessible and viable trading spaces, supported to formalise and incorporated into urban planning, Chenesa could represent a different approach from 2005.”
Ncube noted Tibaijuka’s report, published 21 years ago, made clear that cleaning a city and addressing the conditions which produce urban informality are not the same.
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