Thousands of Zimbabweans are now living like animals in the midst of rubble, crawling in and out of hovels less than 3ft high, fashioned from cardboard boxes and broken asbestos.

With no means of earning a living — and with aid agencies banned by the government from helping them — they are forced to forage in rubbish for rotten vegetables or prostitute themselves for the equivalent of 10p to feed their children. A doctor who managed to get in said tuberculosis was rife.

These are the victims of Operation Murambatsvina (drive out the filth), Mugabe’s so-called urban beautification campaign which, according to a damning report by the United Nations, left more than 700,000 homeless or without an income.

Yet last week the United Nations flew Zimbabwe’s president on an all-expenses-paid trip to Rome to celebrate World Food Day in defiance of European Union travel sanctions. Flanked by bodyguards, he proclaimed that there was no hunger in his country and blamed its problems on George W Bush and Tony Blair, branding them international terrorists and likening them to Hitler and Mussolini.

Such hypocrisy comes as no surprise to the people squatting amid piles of debris in southern Harare, who feel abandoned by the outside world.

There have been similar images of devastation from this year’s hurricanes and earthquakes. But this is man-made destruction — the revenge of a president against the inhabitants of areas that dared to vote against him in one election after another.

“This is the most depressing thing I have ever seen in years of working in trouble spots,” a UN official said. “It’s just all so unnecessary.”

The bulldozers and axes that destroyed thousands of homes and market stalls in June and July, supposedly to clean up the cities, have left a nation teeming with homeless people.

The International Crisis Group estimates Zimbabwe has between 4m and 5m internal refugees — more than a third of the population. They are the victims of Operation Murambatsvina, and workers kicked off commercial farms seized in five years of violent land grabs.

Yet Mugabe refuses to allow a $30m humanitarian appeal by the UN for blankets and food. He objects to the use of the word “humanitarian”.

A consignment of 6,000 blankets and 37 tons of food raised by the South African Council of Churches for the new homeless was blocked at the border by customs authorities. First they demanded duties, then they refused entry, claiming they needed proof the food was not genetically modified.

Many of those who lost their homes were dumped in rural areas, putting enormous strain on villages on the edge of starvation. But others had nowhere to go. These are the people who ended up in the dust of places such as Tsiga Grounds and Ground No 5 in the Mbare district of the capital.

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