BBC NEWS | Africa | Dumped in Zimbabwe's poor villages

A personalized account of Mugabe's operation Murambitsvina ("Drive Out Rubbish")...

BBC NEWS | Africa | Dumped in Zimbabwe's poor villages: "For Thomas and his wife, Charity, it was not a happy homecoming.

In fact, it was not really a homecoming at all. The Zimbabwean government had decided that the young couple belonged in a village deep in the dry bush of Matabeleland North province, in western Zimbabwe.

Thomas was born there, but had not lived there since childhood. His ageing grandmother is his only relative still living in the village.

'They were not pleased to receive us since we came empty-handed,' Thomas said. 'They are in a difficult situation with drought. It was a difficult moment for them.'

The United Nations estimates that up to four million Zimbabweans will need food aid over the coming year - mostly in rural areas.

That came to an end in July, when the government's Operation Murambatsvina [Drive Out Rubbish] reached the place where they were living.

"We were harassed by police who destroyed our shack - that's why we had to come to this place," Thomas said. "The police said there was too much filth in this city."

Thomas, 23, and Charity, 21, had made a living as informal traders in a squatter camp in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second largest city, some 200 km away."...

The government's critics believe that the relocations are part of a strategy to reassert control over urban people who have voted overwhelmingly for the opposition in recent elections.

"They want total political control - they want to peasantify people like [former Cambodian leader] Pol Pot - force them into they country so they can control them," says the Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo, Pius Ncube.

People have become dependent on aid from churches
"In the countryside they have no newspaper or radio except Zanu-PF propaganda, and they are controlled by the chiefs, who support the government."

Thomas and Charity were forced onto a truck which took them out of Bulawayo, then a local bus, and ended up walking for several hours through the bush. They say they received no food during the journey.

Charity says she did not even have a chance to say goodbye to her own family: "Since I came here they don't know I'm here. I want to go and tell them where I am." ...