ESNAT MIDZI has spent the past two months living in a tiny shelter made from old fertiliser sacks stretched over rough-hewn branches.

This is President Mugabe’s answer to the sturdy two-roomed brick house she used to own in Hatcliffe, a Harare township now reduced to rubble by Mr Mugabe’s “Operation Murambatsvina” or “Clean up Trash”.

Home for Esnat and 5,000 others is now the Caledonia transit camp ten miles east of the capital, to which The Times managed to gain access this week. Journalists and the taking of photographs are strictly forbidden.

It was a desperate sight. The densely-packed camp occupies about five acres of steeply sloping land bulldozed to clear the bush. The Government has provided no water, no electricity, no sanitation - nothing except the land, which it seized from a white farmer.

Shacks made from ropedtogether plastic sheeting, plywood, corrugated iron or any other scrap material — even an upside-down boat — stand against each other in unequal rows.

Around each shack are wardrobes, lounge suites, mattresses and other possessions salvaged from the demolitions, bundled up in plastic and piled high. There are heaps of firewood and broken building material. Cooking fires smoulder. When the wind blows, sand gets into everything.

“At night you hear the children coughing,” said Partson Mkondo. “You breathe in dust and smoke while you are sleeping. The toilets are messy, and there are people with diarrhoea.”

The camp has 44 pit latrines, one for every 114 people. The only sources of water are large green bowsers supplied by the United Nations Children’s Fund, along with blankets and plastic sheeting for shelter.

The children have no schools and few of the displaced men have work. Aid agencies are the main source of food.

“People are living in the most appalling and shocking conditions,” said the Rev Ron Steele, a member of a delegation from the South African Council of Churches (SACC) which visited the camp this week. “The church leaders are horrified. It’s one of the most inhumane conditions that people can be subjected to.”

The Mugabe regime claimed yesterday that the delegation, led by the heads of South Africa’s Anglican and Catholic churches, was a clandestine operation disguised as a fact-finding mission and bankrolled by Britain to undermine the Government.

The SACC estimates that about a million have been made homeless by the mass demolitions. Caledonia is the only transit camp that the Government has provided. The rest of the displaced are either living in the ruins of their homes or trying to return to their family villages. Aid agencies estimate that most of those in Caledonia have no rural homes to go to. The rest cannot face the grim poverty and looming famine of the tribal areas.

“This is my third month at Caledonia,” said Harrington Phiri, a signwriter. “I came (to Zimbabwe) from Malawi in 1968. The Government destroyed my home and they say you must go back to the rural areas. I don’t have anywhere else to go. They tell us nothing. I cannot plan anything.”

Mr Mugabe denies that a major demolition has taken place and says 5,000 houses will be ready by the end of next month.

“There will be joy on the part of those who did not have homes,” he said on Thursday. At the same time, the Government admitted that it had laid foundations for only 140 new homes and had money to build only a fraction of the target.

“They have no idea what to do with the people,” Russell Botman, the president of the SACC, said.

Esnat Midzi was drinking tea without milk or sugar. She ate a porridge of pulses distributed by aid agencies. “No money,” she said. There is no public transport to Caledonia and she cannot get to work. Her children have been out of school since they got here. At her feet a young woman lies coughing.

“I had a two-room house,” she said. “I had real plans, not fake plans. They were approved by the council. Mugabe gave us the plot to build on. Now they have destroyed my house. Why? I can only feel anger for people like this.”

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