register their protest against this gross injustice, Government then felt compelled to act. It thus embarked upon its fast track resettlement programme.” It is also the case that the positions adopted by the ZANU (PF) Government since 2000 have generally taken the position that formal adherence to Western, neo-liberal policies is inimical to the interests of African countries and their peoples. This has evoked considerable controversy, and not-inconsiderable support for the Zimbabwe Government , and thus Operation Murambatsvina came as an enormous surprise not only to Zimbabweans but also 10 to external champions of the Government as the operation was destroying the livelihoods of poor black Zimbabweans as opposed to rich white Zimbabweans. ‘Clean-up’ campaign In a military style operation, sometimes conducted in the early hours of the morning, police officers dressed up in riot kit and armed with automatic firearms loaded with live ammunition descended on poor urban people in highdensity suburbs, in and around towns and cities, all over Zimbabwe. The operation involved the bulldozing, smashing, and burning of structures housing many thousands of poor urban dwellers, and destroying flea markets and stalls that had been used, in some cases for many years, by informal traders and vendors. Municipal police assisted in some of these operations, and the army was also deployed in a show of force to deter people from putting up resistance to the police action. The owners of the structures and passers-by were also press-ganged into assisting in breaking down these structures . 11 Many of the people affected were given only a minimal period of time within which to dismantle their structures or to remove their meagre possessions from inside these structures, in some cases only a few hours. In this orgy of destruction, the police destroyed not only flimsy shacks and shanties but also brick houses, some of which were quite large brick buildings. For instance, David Coltart, an MDC Member of Parliament, said that houses which the police destroyed in the Makokoba suburb of Bulawayo were not shanties, but were small four-room houses built with Government approval as long as 70 or 80 years ago. The buildings destroyed included buildings for which the 12 owners had proper plans or in respect of which the occupants held valid leases. In Hatcliffe, a squatter camp in north Harare, the police destroyed not only a Catholic refuge for Aids orphans, but also a secondary school, a World Bank-funded public lavatory, and a Sunni mosque. The people affected by the police action included 375 orphans and vulnerable children attending a local primary school whose fees were being paid by AIDS Service Organisations, and 103 adults living with AIDS who started on anti-retroviral therapy under the care of the local clinic which has now been closed. Amongst the homes destroyed were those of at least 6 childheaded households and 40 grandparent-headed households providing shelter for orphans. Informal vendors and traders, in both the high-density areas and the central business districts, had their stalls and markets destroyed by the police. Huge markets, like a sprawling market at a place called Siyaso in Mbare, Harare, were razed to the ground. During the operations against vendors and traders, the police confiscated large quantities