First Zimbabwe, now Malawi

It's contagious. First one country gets away with violently evicting squatters and crushing their homes and livelihoods. Then another says, essentially, 'Hey: those guys got away with it. So can we.'

That seems to be what's happening in Malawi, where squatters in the capital, Lilongwe, have been given two weeks to move, according to this dispatch from the South African channel news 24.

"As government we will use what is provided in the law and if we have to move them by force then the government will use that channel," Felix Tukula, a senior Housing Ministry official, said.

The squatter communities under the gun so far are small, and bear names like Baghdad and Dubai.