So, it appears government has finally come in as the knight in shining armour after it decreed that demolition of all illegal structures in Harare must stop.
Local Government and Public Works minister Daniel Garwe told NewsDay the demolitions were inhumane as the City of Harare was giving affected families a seven-day notice to vacate the land owned by council.
“From now onwards no house is going to be demolished. We are stopping them from demolishing houses. That's the position of the government,” he said.
According to Garwe, a person takes six months to build a house while the council watches.
“Then you want to come and give them a notice of 7 days to come and demolish the house. You give them a notice to relocate, where can they relocate in that short period of time?
“At least they should give them four or five months so that they are able to build elsewhere. Yes, Mafume [Harare mayor Jacob] has a court order, but it does not give him the right to cause pain and suffering to people,” Garwe said.
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The demolitions would have resulted in thousands of families with nowhere to go amid the onset of the rainy season.
Government has finally provided leadership. However, this is not enough.
The fact that council has court orders to evict the people means they are living on borrowed time. There is no way the settlements can be regularised as they are built on areas meant for other developments.
Harare had pencilled to demolish as many as 5 000 houses in high-density suburbs such as Kuwadzana, Budiriro, Glen View and Mabvuku armed with 37 High Court orders.
All these illegal settlements have the fingerprints of land barons that have wreaked havoc, selling council and government land to desperate homeseekers.
The land barons, with tacit approval of senior politicians, forged council documents and milked desperate homeseekers. Some formed co-operatives whose sole purpose was to fleece desperate homeseekers of their hard-earned money.
There should be a way to stop this madness of illegal parcelling out of State or council land.
Until last month, the land barons appeared untouchable.
Police last month said it had nabbed 184 land barons for misleading unsuspecting individuals resulting in unlawful construction on State-owned land, wetlands and grazing land.
They will soon walk scot-free and continue with their nefarious deeds until government toughens its stance against them.
A report by a commission of inquiry set up to inquire into the sale of State land in and around urban areas since 2005 chaired by Justice Tendai Uchena revealed that the haphazard nature of land allocation had created opportunities for land barons/criminals to sell urban State land. Land barons are usually politically connected, powerful, self-proclaimed illegal State land "authorities" who illegally sell State land in and around urban areas without accounting for the proceeds, the report said.
A city that seeks to attain world-class status by 2025 must never allow the mushrooming of illegal settlements. We urge the government to allow the city to instil order, guided by what the law says.
Government should not be seen to be protecting illegal settlers as that sends the wrong message that illegal settlements will be protected from the “long arm of the law”. There has been a tendency for people to invade council or State land and ask authorities to regularise. The city needs to plan for new settlements so that they have basic amenities. The biggest enemy to proper planning is the land baron who must be defeated, notwithstanding one’s political connections.