HARARE City Council has lost track of its housing waiting list as land barons mostly linked to the ruling Zanu PF party continue invading vacant land and parcelling it out to desperate homeseekers, a probe heard yesterday.
This emerged at the ongoing commission of inquiry into operations of the Harare City Council.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa in May this year appointed the retired judge Justice Maphios Cheda-led commission to probe the operations of Harare City Council and its business units from 2017 to date.
Appearing before the commission yesterday, council’s housing principal officer Edgar Dzehonye said the city’s housing waiting list was now just a mere formality because of land invasions.
“We have had situations where we have people who invade council land and then council resolves to regularise those people,” Dzehonye said.
“In that case, we will not be able to follow the housing waiting list. We will then be forced to look at who has invaded and who has had that invasion recognised.
“The people, who join co-operatives, will not be following a particular format. So you will find out that one co-operative is prioritised ahead of another co-operative, and you find some people who registered later being considered while those that registered initially will not be considered simply because their co-operative will not be ready for allocation.”
The city’s housing waiting list stands at over 100 000.
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Harare and surrounding areas have seen the sprouting of numerous illegal settlements as a result of shady deals among land barons, council officials and political party members.
Land barons, most of whom are linked to Zanu PF, have been illegally selling council and State land to desperate homeseekers.
Every rainy season, houses built on wetlands in Harare are flooded with water, leaving residents counting losses after their household property has been destroyed.
Dzehonye said council officials had been turned into clerical officers as a result of land invasions.
“All we have to do is to make sure we regularise, which is basically write allocation letters for those people from the lists that are being submitted through the district offices,” he said.
“This is what I meant here, that the role of the director of housing is to really interrogate the housing waiting list and the housing need is no longer there because the space already comes with a list attached to it.
“We then end up being just clerical officers, just populating our allocation letters with information that will be submitted,” he said.
In a related case, the trial of eight Harare councillors accused of corruptly allocating 24 industrial stands to themselves continued before Harare magistrate Clever Tsikwa yesterday.
According to State prosecutor Tendai Tapi, the accused persons, Costa Mande, Gilbert Thamsanga Hadebe, Maxwell Dutuma, Loveness Gomba, Happymore Gotora, Ian Muteto Makone, Stanley Manasi Manyenga and Shepherd Chikomba, are each facing two counts of criminal abuse of office as public officers.
The trial resumes today.
