Reti Chakadenga, now living among destitutes on the banks of a river on the outskirts of Harare, battled to hold back tears as she narrated her daily struggle after her "unplanned" three-roomed brick home was razed last year.

"I now live with my four children and two grandchildren in a plastic and metal shack on the banks of Mukuvisi River, yet I had a proper house," she told scores who gathered in a hall in Highfield township to mark the controversial Operation Murambatsvina, or Drive Out Filth.

"It pains me when I remember that I used to live in a proper house," the 58-year-old mother of four said.

A community theatre group and groups of aspiring rap musicians and poets performed at the first of a series of events to be held until July 18 to mark the crackdown.

According to the United Nations, the operation left at least 700,000 homeless and destitute and affected 1.2 million people in various ways.

"People have shown they have not forgotten that unfortunate chapter in our history," said Precious Shumba, the spokesman for Combined Harare Residents and Ratepayers' Association, one of the organisations organising the events.

The clean-up drive by President Robert Mugabe's government also deprived at least a million people of their means of livelihood and has since became known as the "tsunami".

Despite a much-vaunted follow-up operation called "Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle" or "Live Well", meant to provide a better life to those whose homes or shops were destroyed, tens of thousands are still living in makeshift homes at various locations across the country.

In the second city of Bulawayo, a group of churches vowed to defy a police ban and hold a prayer procession on Thursday.

"The march is going ahead as planned although police have said we can't go ahead," said Useni Sibanda, a spokesman for the Zimbabwe Christian Alliance.

"Church services are exempt under the Public Order and Security Act and Zimbabwe Christian Alliance is organising these prayer events not for political gain ... but because it has a biblical mandate to stand in solidarity with the poor," said Usendi.

Alouis Chaumba, director of the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP) said the majority of the victims of the crackdown were worse off than they were before the demolitions.

"The whole exercise has not improved the lives of the affected people in any way," Chaumba told AFP.

"There are still health hazards in places ... where garbage goes uncollected for weeks and sewage flows on the streets, people are living on crowded conditions in houses that were spared."

Church and rights groups have chalked out a series of events to mark the first anniversary of the blitz and security agents have summoned some ecclesiastical leaders and a vocal lecturer, John Makumbe, over these plans.

"It appears the police and security forces are panicking as we have seen by the arrest of John Makumbe," said Thabani Moyo from the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition.

"We are taking stock of the promises that government made after Operation Murambatsvina," Thabani Moyo, spokesman for Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, told AFP.

Zimbabwean authorities launched Operation Murambatsvina on May 18 last year, calling it an attempt to clean up the capital and other towns of hawkers and knock down illegal buildings.

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