the open with their parents and the children are too traumatised or demoralised to attend school. The schooling of many of these displaced children has been disrupted at a particularly bad time because many were due to write examinations at the end of June. According to one news report in mid-June, some 300 000 children of informal traders and city squatter families have dropped out of school in the last four weeks after their homes were destroyed by the Government. According to this report, officials at the Ministry of Education head office in Harare said directors of education in the country’s 10 provinces were last week asked to compile figures of children, under 13 years, no longer coming to school because their families were evicted in the Government’s urban ‘clean-up’ operation. One senior official who spoke to the news agency anonymously, for fear of victimization, said: “The average figure of pupils no longer attending school because their family has been evicted is 100 per school and these are just primary school kids. But in secondary schools, it appears the effect of the evictions has not been that devastating.” 26 Amongst those people that have been made homeless in the blitz are many people with HIV. The dislocation of these people has severely disrupted their treatment, and care programmes. In the Hatcliffe area, outside Harare, a Catholic Day-care Centre for AIDS orphans was destroyed. Persons with HIV or AIDS will be exceptionally vulnerable as a result of the disruption of diet, care, and medical treatment . The Zimbabwe Association of Doctors 27 for Human Rights(ZADHR) issued a very strong statement in this respect . 28 The onslaught against the informal trading sector has rendered destitute people who were supporting themselves and their families by trading in the informal sector. Many of these traders lost their goods when the police confiscated them or they were damaged or destroyed during the ‘clean-up’ operation. In a speech to mark Africa Day, MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, had this to say: “Government’s claim that such action is in the public interest is disingenuous. Street vendors are not sabotaging the economy; it is the government, which is sabotaging the economy through mismanagement and corruption. Teachers, doctors, nurses, factory workers and people from all walks of life have been forced into becoming street vendors as it has become the only means of survival. . . A government that destroys the properties of people, who are trying to make an honest living, is evil. It is people-insensitive. Millions of Zimbabweans have been made poor and jobless by this regime. The people have sought ways to provide for their families. Not only have flea markets and tuck shops been destroyed – the people’s belongings have been stolen by the government. The government did not even have the heart to give people a notice period to salvage their belongings; it ploughed through their properties and looted their goods. That is unforgivable.” 29 Removal of people to rural areas Government seems to want to induce many of the people who have been living in informal settlements to move back to the rural areas. A substantial number of Hatcliffe residents whose homes had been destroyed were forcibly put onto trucks and moved to a farm outside Harare called Caledonia Farm. Speaking about this, the police spokesman, Wayne Bvudzijena, said: