ZIMBABWE has cracked down on churches sheltering victims of Robert Mugabe’s “clean-up” operation that has made a million people homeless.

Riot police in the western city of Bulawayo yesterday raided at least five churches that were sheltering about 500 people affected by President Mugabe’s Operation Murambatsvina, which translates as Operation “drive out filth”.

The authorities have also banned church officials and organisations from a government holding camp outside the city to which the displaced are being moved.

Reverend Graham Shaw, a Methodist minister, said:

“Police in full anti-riot gear arrived in trucks, totally unannounced, woke the people up and forced them to get into the vehicles.”

Father Barnabas Nqindi, an Anglican priest, was arrested when he argued with police. He was taken to a police station and “subjected to hostile interrogation”.

The incidents came days after a delegation from the South African Council of Churches (SACC), including Cardinal Wilfred Napier and Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane, the heads of the Catholic and Anglican churches in South Africa, said that conditions for the homeless in Zimbabwe were “appalling and inhumane”.

The country’s state press said that the SACC visit was “a clandestine operation disguised as a fact-finding mission, bankrolled by the British Government”.

A report on the displacements by Anna Tibaijuku, the head of Habitat, a UN body, is imminent. Mr Mugabe may find himself subject to UN Security Council censure if, as expected, it condemns the operation.

Aid agencies say that the destruction of “illegal structures” is continuing in rural areas.

On Tuesday homes were being burnt on farms near Odzi in eastern Zimbabwe, according to Father Michael Bennett, a Catholic priest.

People were forced from church compounds in Bulawayo and taken to a holding camp at Helensvale, about 20km (12½ miles) outside the city. “Police are obviously under orders to remove the visible remnants of Operation Murambatsvina and hide them out of sight of the international community,” said Reverend Shaw. A Pentecostal minister was forcibly ejected from the camp by police during a service for parishioners who had lost their homes. He was ordered not to return.

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