Smash hit

This paper linked the rise in malnourished children to shortages caused by the land-grab programme that were compounded by the loss of livelihoods resulting from Operation Murambatsvina. “Most of the severe malnutrition is urban-based, which is highly unusual,” said Powell.

At a church feeding centre in Bulawayo I met crowds of desperate people who had spent their last dollars to catch a bus 100 miles into town in search of food for their children. Most said they had not had a meal of sadza, the staple maize porridge, for three weeks — some for two months.

“There is no food where we are,” said one mother as she looked in disappointment at the 22lb bag of maize that was all she was given. “Now we will have to beg the Z$400,000 (£1.14) bus fare back.”

“The hunger is like a plague,” said Pastor Edwin (not his real name), a brave priest whose own church was demolished in Operation Murambatsvina and who has tried to keep track of — and feed — more than 2,000 people who were dumped in remote areas.

Despite being arrested several times he has persuaded colleagues from other denominations to form an alliance of 150 pastors, called Churches of Bulawayo, which helps the victims.

He sneaks me into Killarney, an old squatter settlement that was demolished last June but to which some families have returned, driven out of rural areas by the lack of food. The conditions are shocking, with people clustered in shelters of branches and scrap metal.

Their only protection from the rains are a few plastic sheets that Pastor Edwin managed to obtain. Children in ragged clothes clamour for food while women sit around with dulled expressions, chewing seeds. Many have been affected mentally, according to the priest.

“Whenever I try to sleep, I see my wardrobe being smashed and my house going up in flames,” said one woman. Every few days police come and chase them out again, but they have nowhere else to go.

“We’re losing an average of two people a week here to starvation,” said Pastor Edwin, showing some abandoned shelters where the inhabitants have died. “Several times I’ve been called to places urgently, only to find they have already died of starvation. I see the signs everywhere — the hands and feet grey like bark.”

“The government doesn’t care about these people and it has become my problem because I do,” he added. “But it’s never ending.”

The hunger is so widespread in Zimbabwe that the World Food Programme (WFP) has increased the numbers on food aid in the country from 1m last July to 4m, more than a third of the population.

Michael Huggins, a spokesman for the WFP in southern Africa, said: “If this was Niger or Ethiopia you would see dead bodies everywhere. For some reason Zimbabwe stays afloat and one of those reasons is remittances.”

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