The brutal eviction campaign being conducted by the Mugabe government in Zimbabwe against thousands of the most vulnerable section of the population in the townships and squatter camps has earned it universal condemnation.
To claim, however as the BBC did recently, that bulldozers were now "crashing through the homes of 500,000 people" in Harare with a total population of 1-2 million, is clearly an exaggeration.
To understand the situation in Zimbabwe it is important to place it within the context of its more recent history and in particular to examine the role of Imperialism and its agencles, the World Bank and the IMF In the life of the country.
Operation Murambatsvina or "Clean Up The Rubbish", launched in May by the Mugabe government at the height of the winter involved the forcible eviction on a wide scale of residents of squatter camps throughout Zimbabwe. It is reported that at least three people and as many as seven may have died during the eviction campaign.
The government figure for those who have lost their homes is 120,000 while ald agencies suggest 300,000. Not only have homes been torn down with families having to sleep in the open but markets have been razed with the consequent loss of livelihood to large numbers of traders in the Informal sector.
There are press reports of 22,000 people having been arrested or had their property confiscated.
The eviction campaign was launched soon after Mugabe's victory in the parliamentary elections earlier this year. This was at a time when the economy was in dire straits with unemployment nearing 80%, Inflation at 144% and severe shortages of food and fuel.
Unable to reverse the economic tide, the government turned instead to scapegoating the poverty stricken squatter camp and township residents, who had voted so heavily against it and for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change(MDC) In the elections.
The very language the government employed in launching its eviction campaign "Clean Up The Rubbish" was that of the former colonial and racist regimes.
It is not the first, nor will it be the last time that Mugabe and the elite who surround him launch attacks on the oppressed masses of Zimbabwe. Needless to say, the roots of the crisis in Zimbabwe do not spring only from the ZANU leadership but also from colonialism and Imperialism.
The Lancaster House Agreement of 1979 imposed by British imperialism on Zimbabwe thwarted a solution to the agrarian problem.
Most of the land remained under the control of a tiny minority of white farmers while the majority of the black population, the peasants remained crowded into small areas of land.
The subsequent takeover of some of the white farms by the black elite failed to meet the demands of the peasantry for land, millions of whom remained landless and were forced to flock to the squatter camps in the towns, where most are without jobs and lead a precarious existence.
After independence the government did introduce radical reforms in health and education but when it ran up debts and was forced to turn to the World Bank and the IMF for loans an Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP) was imposed on the country in 1991.
This had the usual dire consequences for the population, who were once again forced to pay for attending schools and medical treatment.
An IMF sponsored study in1998 concluded that its own policies had deleterious affects on the lives of Zimbabweans. The burden of repayment of the foreign debt became so brutal that Mugabe stopped paying it a few years ago and only recently resumed payment on a very limited scale.
He is being demonised by imperialism and Zimbabwe is finding it very difficult to obtain further foreign loans. The people of Zimbabwe are having to pay a terrible price for the misdeeds of their rulers and of imperialism.