Life is still an uphill struggle for hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans forced to live in the open after the government-led Operation Murambatsvina (Drive out Trash) demolished their homes almost two years ago.

The operation, which demolished informal homes and markets, was aimed at clearing slums and flushing out criminals, according to the government, but instead left more than 700,000 people homeless or without a livelihood in the winter of 2005.

Uprooted families were told to return to their homes in rural villages, but the descendants of immigrants who had nowhere to go were forced into tiny, government-sanctioned living spaces on the outskirts of urban centres, with no source of employment.

Some resisted, choosing to relocate to townships near city centres in the hope of earning a livelihood by vending. But spiralling inflation - now more than 1,700 percent - the recent spate of violence and increased police patrols on the streets have made it difficult to trade.

Gaudenzia Phiri, 38, and her family of three lived in Kambuzuma township in the capital, Harare, until May 2005 when the bulldozers crushed their dreams. They moved to another informal settlement in Dzivaresekwa township, west of Harare. Now a widow, Phiri supports her two children by selling vegetables and fruit on the streets of Harare.

She has to be constantly vigilant; municipal policemen roam the streets and confiscate the wares of illegal vendors. Sometimes she and her colleagues have to hide themselves and their wares almost every hour. "This is the kind of life that we live but we cannot be stopped because we have families to look after," she said, emerging from her hiding place.

"Dashing into alleys with edible perishable goods obviously compromises the health standards, but that is the only way we can survive." Shortly afterwards, two women and four men approached the illegal vendors, pretended to buy some of their products and then arrested them.

Some of her more agile colleagues managed to get away, but Phiri was not so lucky. Their goods confiscated, the arrested vendors were loaded into a truck and taken to the police station to pay a Zim$25,000 fine (US$1.00 at the parallel market exchange rate, where US$1 buys Zim$25,000).

Harare municipality spokesman Percy Toriro told IRIN that the police would continue to uphold high standards of cleanliness. "We want to ensure that we have a very clean environment that everybody can be proud of. That means people should only conduct business from designated points."

Dispossessed informal traders complained that they had to wait in queues for days at local authority offices to get a licence.

Bulawayo

About 430km southwest of Harare, Godknows Mabusa, another vendor, has spent most of the past two years playing cat-and-mouse with the municipal police in Zimbabwe's second city, Bulawayo. "I survive by outrunning the municipal officers because I have no vending license ... Survival was much easier for me before the clean-up operation, but it will never be the same again."

Another Bulawayo resident, Mluleki Dumani, managed to acquire a vending licence to sell vegetables in the city centre, but was unable to support his family on his meagre takings in the face of the worsening economic crisis.

He makes about US$40 a month, but the monthly rent for a single room is about US$80. Dumani said he was fortunate to have found accommodation with his parents. "Many other victims of the clean-up have not been so lucky."

Life has not been easy for those who chose to return to their villages either: failed crops and constant rejection by traditional leaders has doubled the pain.

"I was brought here protesting, wailing and kicking out in a bid to convince the police officers that I have no one to come to, but they forced me," said Lydia Mothibi, 37, a former tuck-shop operator who moved to a rural settlement outside Bulawayo with her five children.

"When we got here, we were dumped at the chief's homestead and stayed there for three days. Later we were told that we could build temporary shelters on this small plot, but to continue looking for permanent settlements. We are yet to find that. We struggled to find a plot to till, but our crops were a complete write-off, so we have nothing to eat. We remain a hungry and unwanted people."

Her predicament is shared by many others in the settlement. Many children have been unable to attend school since the group was dumped there almost two years ago and have been confined to their homes. The families survive on the meagre yield of their plots, sometimes a watermelon or a few ears of maize.

In some of the settlements of its urban renewal housing project in Harare, the government had started building and allocating permanent houses to people displaced by Operation Murambatsvina. A year ago, many of the hastily constructed houses lacked ablution facilities and access to services like water and electricity. Since then, a lack of funds has stalled the project.