> A woman stands in the mangled ruins of her market stall in downtown Bulawayo, eyes brimming with tears and unable to find the words to describe her grief and fear.Zimbabwe's second city is the latest target in the brutal nationwide blitzkrieg on the informal economic sector.
Hours earlier, dozens of heavily armed police demolished thousands of licensed market stalls - smashing, burning and seizing goods and arresting hundreds of vendors.
Like thousands of others in this devastated city, this woman has lost all her wares and livelihood, in one terrifying morning of wholesale destruction. "What can we do?" she asked.
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Impassive gestures belie the frightened eyes and simmering anger of the Bulawayo traders, who these past two days have been murmuring the word of their darkest horrors: "gukurahundi".It's the local Shona word for "the wind that sweeps away the chaff before the rain", used to describe the genocidal terror overseen by President Robert Mugabe to get rid of political opposition at the beginning of his reign in the early 1980s.
> The people of Zimbabwe are saying they have suffered long enough. They are saying they cannot endure anymore the pain and suffering that Zanu-PF has unleashed upon them over the past few years. Many are saying that the time has come to cast the die and take a last stand against the Robert Mugabe led regime. Some are even demanding that the regime be confronted head on, in a no-holds barred collision process!
> Police in Zimbabwe have warned they will take tough action against a general strike due to be held on Thursday and Friday. A police spokesman said they would deal "ruthlessly" with those who take part in [the] strike.
> President Robert Mugabe and his wife Grace will splash out close to R3-million on a 10th wedding anniversary party at their rural home in Kutama, about 60km west of Harare. Several Southern African regional leaders are expected to attend...
> A United Nations expert has said the forced eviction of thousands of people from the Zimbabwean capital, Harare, may have been politically motivated.
> Virtually all the areas singled out for demolition voted for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change in the last elections. The MDC says that Mr Mugabe ordered the destruction as a deliberate reprisal. But the regime is also seeking to depopulate the cities, driving people into the countryside where the MDC is virtually non-existent and the ruling Zanu-PF Party dominates.The Herald, the official daily newspaper, urged "urbanites" to go "back to the rural home, to reconnect with one's roots and earn an honest living from the soil our government repossessed under the land reform programme".