by Christopher Makaza
Several home seekers have lost millions of dollars to illegal urban stand deals involving mostly land barons linked to the MDC-Alliance.
Families of home seekers have been devastated and their hopes and dreams have been shattered after losing their hard earned savings to ruthless land barons.
Recently, heart-breaking video clips of state of the art houses being demolished by council bulldozers in Ruwa, Chitungwiza and surrounding areas were circulating on social media. People questioned on what was being done to the land barons who are connected to Council officials.
In Chitungwiza, the land barons continue to cause havoc selling illegal stands on open spaces and wet lands that are not suitable for construction of houses.
It is understood that the land barons connive with council officials including the MDC-Alliance councillors in generating site plans and offer letters that are being backdated to last year and beyond.
It is surprising that stands are being pegged in car parks, play grounds, over sewer and water mains, which have left some places experiencing numerous sewer bursts and water shortages. Council officials are to blame for allocating people stands in unfitting places which is now inconveniencing some innocent residents.
The Government and the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (ZACC) should arrest all the land barons and those parcelling out land on undesignated sites despite having council papers. There is need for Government to urgently intervene and save the remaining open spaces.
Several MDC-Alliance urban councillors including ex-mayor, Herbert Gomba and suspended Harare town clerk, Hosiah Chisango have been arrested over illegal land deals. Gomba and Chisango were arrested separately this year on corruption allegations. Gomba was the first to be arrested on July 22 on allegations of corruptly allocating land to undeserving beneficiaries, while Chisango was later arrested on September 10 on allegations of illegally creating 14 residential stands in Kuwadzana without following due process.
The absence of a human settlement policy has impeded justice to desperate home seekers and bring land barons and leaders of housing cooperatives to book for their illegal land deals.
Recently, Cabinet approved the Zimbabwe National Human Settlements Policy presented by Vice President Kembo Mohadi as the Chairman of the Cabinet Committee on Social Services and Poverty Eradication, which could bring sanity to settlements in line with global disaster risk reduction frameworks. This development will protect several home seekers and those taking advantage of their plight will be severely punished.
The human settlements policy is aimed at informing the implementation of relevant facets of Agenda 2030's Sustainable Development Goals, Vision 2030 and national and international pliability frameworks.
The settlements policy will introduce a raft of measures that will ascertain the planning, development and management of settlements in line with global trends.
The policy will also assist in mitigating inequalities between rural and urban areas, as well as addressing housing and social amenities backlogs burdening local authorities.
Besides illegal land dealings, the MDC-Alliance local authorities countrywide are not doing justice to service delivery. The state of the roads in most urban areas continue to deteriorate with most being virtually impassable due to the widening and deepening of potholes. The potholed roads are increasingly becoming a hazard to motorists as well as pedestrians who are finding it difficult to navigate them. With the approach of the rain season, the situation is going to be even worse.
Uncollected garbage is also a health hazard in most residential areas. For a long time, the councils have also failed to supply clean water to rate payers, which have resulted in people relying on borehole water and other unprotected water sources.
It’s not surprising that the latest Auditor-General Mildred Chiri’s report revealed that the majority of residents in Zimbabwe’s major urban areas are drinking sewage-contaminated water due to poor management systems by local authorities. An assessment by the Auditor-General on six major cities in the country showed that urban local authorities were failing to attend to sewer blockages within 24 hours, resulting in raw sewage mixing with drinking water.
Something surely have to give, the status quo cannot be allowed to remain. Hence, Zimbabweans have to vote wisely in 2023, if they want the decay brought on by MDC councillors in local authorities over the past twenty years to be addressed.
