The homes of some 200,000 Zimbabwean city dwellers have been demolished in the past three weeks, according to the United Nations.

Police have been moving from area to area, in some cases forcing people to knock down their own homes. In others, they have turned up with bulldozers to demolish structures which they say have been built illegally.

Worshippers at a Harare mosque have even been made to destroy it, says opposition MP Trudy Stevenson. Thousands of desperate Zimbabweans are living on the streets, others have gone back to their rural homes, while some have managed to squeeze into parts of the cities not yet touched by what some are calling the “tsunami”.

President Robert Mugabe said “Operation Murambatsvina [Drive out rubbish]” was needed to “restore sanity” to Zimbabwe’s cities, which he said had become overrun with criminals…