Robert Mugabe's Operation Murambatsvina ('driving out trash') began on 19 May. Heavily armed militia, backed by helicopters and fighter planes, swooped down on a helpless civilian population. Mugabe's forces have bulldozed and burned his political opponents' shacks and makeshift shops in Zimbabwe's cities, rounding up terrified men, women and children, and piling them onto open lorries. 'They are not being told where they are being taken,' says Trudy Stevenson, an opposition MP, 'but they have the impression that it is far away.' Many will die of hunger and exposure on the journey. It is no exaggeration to compare Mugabe's attitude to the urban poor who voted against him to that of the Hutu warlords who talked of exterminating the Tutsi 'cockroaches'.

LRB 7 July 2005 | PDF Download