A controversial police crackdown on illegal mining late last year, followed by an environmental rehabilitation project in which small-scale farmers in central Zimbabwe were forced to participate, has left them struggling to find their feet and adversely affected food security.

Police arrested more than 20,000 "illegal miners" across the country in Operation Chikorokoza Chapera (No to Illegal Mining), which began in November 2006, and then rounded up local people and forced them to work on restoring the landscape. Many left their homes for safer places, while small-scale farmers were forced to abandon their fields in the planting season.

Faced with the world's highest annual inflation rate - more than 1,700 percent - and 80 percent unemployment, thousands of Zimbabweans, including professionals, have abandoned their jobs to dig for minerals in rural areas across the country.

Illegal gold panners, known as 'makorokoza', left a trail of gullies and pits in Gokwe, a cotton-farming district in Midlands Province, about 260km west of the capital, Harare.

Many subsistence farmers had to give up working on their plots, and abandoned and now derelict thatched huts dot the countryside in and around Chevecheve village in Gokwe. Some residents have returned, but a number of huts remain unoccupied.

"The police came and raided the area, arresting a number of the makorokoza and, after several crackdowns, the gold panners disappeared. That was when we were forced to attend a meeting in the village at which we were told that we should participate in filling up the gullies," Saiton Mukudu, a village elder, told IRIN.

He said the police accused Chevecheve residents of causing damage to the environment by mining illegally; they took the names of all the villagers and ordered them, including teenagers and the elderly, to use shovels to fill up the gullies and pits, and this "obviously scared those who decided to leave the area".

People who refused to participate were hunted down and sometimes beaten up. "We suggested to the police that the government should instead make arrangements for volunteers to get involved and get paid either in cash or kind, but they would not hear of that, saying we were all responsible for the damage to the environment," Mukudu said.

"I do not disagree with the police that the environment has been badly damaged. In fact, we also had problems with these makorokoza because sometimes they invaded our fields and disturbed our farming activities. They also even went as far as digging up graveyards, but the point is that most of them came from other places," he added.

He had to take care of some of the homesteads after the fleeing villagers pleaded with him to do so.

Missed out on planting season

Margaret Chimboza, 43, a widow, recently returned to her home. "I am devastated by what the police did. I have never participated in illegal panning all my life since I could adequately cater for my family on the cotton that I produced on my plot." She "escaped" to a nearby farm, where she worked as a casual worker.

"It was therefore extremely unfair for the police to come and round all of us up and accuse us of damaging the environment. After all, even if it is true that there were people who were indiscriminately digging up the earth, the timing of the operation was wrong because it was the farming season and we had to abandon our fields."

Having missed out on planting season, Chimboza, who is also asthmatic, now has to raise funds to reconstruct her home and feed her two children, who have also been unable to return to school.

"It is a real drawback because my children have to spend the whole year doing nothing and can only resume next year, assuming there is no operation like that again," the frail woman said.

Legal miners affected

Many legal small-scale miners have also been left in a quandary after their operations were stopped by the police. Joseph Rukodzi owned three gold mining claims in the Ngezi district 20km west of Kadoma town, about 125km southwest of Harare, but when the operation started he was accused of mining illegally and forced to close them down.

Rukodzi was among more than 50,000 small-scale miners who were forced to abandon their livelihood after the police crackown last year, when the government alleged that the country was being prejudiced of large quantities of foreign currency, as illegal miners smuggled minerals out of the country.

"I was surprised that the police insisted that I should stop operating, even after I produced valid certificates that showed clearly that I was a registered miner and had been operating for five years," Rukodzi told IRIN. He had managed to build a house in Kadoma and intended to start a grocery store with the profits from his mining venture before the clampdown.

He had made numerous visits to the police and even approached Home Affairs officials for the release of his confiscated equipment and certificates, but to no avail.

"Some of my friends have paid bribes to the police and are back in mining, but I don't see any reason why I should go to the extent of giving them a kickback when I am in this business legally. Besides, where will I get the money to pay them when I have not been generating money for five months?" he said.

Earlier this month, George Kawonza, president of the Zimbabwe Miners Federation, reported that only 100 small-scale miners had been allowed to resume mining. The crackdown on illegal miners was scaled down when some of the miners testified to a parliamentary committee that influential government officials were soliciting bribes from them and participating in illegal mining activities.

Innocent Makwiramiti, an economist and former chief executive officer of the Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce (ZNCC), said the government had "gone overboard" in carrying out the operation.

"It was legitimate to put a stop to illegal panning, but the methods that the police used were extremely wrong: they have left a trail of suffering through the indiscriminate closure of mines and disruption of farming activities, worse still now that the country has been hit by another drought," Makwiramiti told IRIN.

"But it is vital to also consider why illegal mining is so rampant in the country," he said. "Something should be done to fix the economy."