THE President arrived for the state opening of parliament in a black Rolls-Royce, medals pinned to his chest. He inspected a guard of honour of mounted police lancers. He then delivered a 35-minute speech condemning lawlessness and demanding “greater cohesion and unity” from his countrymen.

At first sight this was a fine example of democracy in action, except that the country was Zimbabwe, the President was Robert Mugabe and the parliament was elected in polls last March that were widely denounced as fraudulent.

MPs of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change boycotted yesterday’s ceremonies, and even as Mr Mugabe was speaking his security forces were continuing their three-week drive to raze the shantytowns of Harare and Bulawayo — MDC strongholds — that has left up to a million people homeless.

In the squatter settlement of Hatcliffe, in northern Harare, police were loading hundreds of people into lorries and dumping them outside the capital in a transit camp surrounded by a barbed-wire fence. They were guarded by police and crammed cheek-by-jowl with evictees in tents.

“It’s like a prison,” Trudy Stevenson, the MDC MP for the area, said. “It’s a recipe for disease like nothing I have seen for a very long time.”

In his speech, Mr Mugabe defended Operation Murambatsvina (drive out trash) as a “vigorous clean-up campaign to restore order” in urban areas. “The current chaotic state of affairs where (small businesses) operated outside the regulatory framework and in undesignated and crime-ridden areas could not be countenanced much longer,” he said.

Zimbabwe’s Roman Catholic bishops declared that a “grave crime has been committed against poor and helpless people”. They added: “We warn the perpetrators of this crime that history will hold you individually accountable.”

Yesterday was supposed to mark the start of a two- day national strike against the urban blitz, which has destroyed hundreds of thousands of shacks, squatter camps and makeshift roadside shops. The strike, the first big attempt at mass protest for more than a year, was called by the Broad Alliance, a bloc comprising the MDC, the national labour movement and civil rights groups. But its hopes for a nationwide show of defiance against what it called a “criminal regime” were crushed again by a Government with the apparent ability to cow its subjects indefinitely.

After a show of force that included arrests, roadblocks, swoops by military helicopters and patrols by heavily armed riot police, most workers caught rattletrap minibuses into the city’s commercial and industrial areas for a normal day’s work. “We are afraid the Army will come and get us in our homes,” Kelvin Muchazwepi, a welder at a transport company, said. “There were police everywhere last night and on Tuesday there were helicopters.”

Rutendo Mabwe, a supermarket till operator, said: “We fear the state agents. They can come any time and kill you. Also, we were told if we did not come to work today we would be fired.”

Jobs are hard to come by after six years of economic collapse that has led to 80 per cent unemployment. The informal street traders and artisans had become vital for the survival of urban populations, but Mr Mugabe’s crackdown has wiped out almost all street business. The flower sellers, soapstone sculpture hawkers, itinerant panel beaters and vegetable touts have all but disappeared from towns and cities. Their homes — for the most part respectable brick structures — are now heaps of rubble.

Miloon Kothari, a UN housing expert, described the policy as “a gross violation of human rights” that was creating “a new kind of apartheid”.

Political analysts have little doubt that the destruction is punishment meted out to the urban poor who have consistently voted against Mr Mugabe’s Zanu (PF) party in the past three elections, and an attempt to depopulate the urban areas to ensure that it does not happen again.

Despite Zimbabwe’s desperate economic plight, Mr Mugabe showed no sign of changing course yesterday. He used his speech to announce plans to create a second chamber, a senate; to streamline his Government’s land reforms under which white-owned farms are seized; to introduce mandatory penalties for illegal trade in foreign currencies; and to open up the foreign-owned mining sector to Zimbabweans.

Explore World News

• World Agenda

• Iraq News

• US & Americas News

• Europe News

• Middle East News

• Asia News

• Africa News

• Ireland News

Times Recommends

• Michael Jackson: Not the final chapter
• Indian Army spends10m rupees on golf buggies
• Brüno toned down for 15 rating