Chaos reigns in Harare as councillors take over land allocation

Lovemore Chikova

Deputy Editor

OPPOSITION CCC councillors in Harare, led by Audit Committee chairperson Councillor Blessing Duma, have effectively taken over the allocation of stands from the housing department after they hijacked a noble regularisation project to collude with land barons.

This has resulted in the deterioration of land governance in the capital to a point where access to residential stands is now free for all under the guise of driving the regularisation process.

The housing department no longer has any say in how and where land is allocated, as barons are now categorised by their wards, using complicit councillors to get protection from eviction.

This bypassing of proper town planning procedures and processes has resulted in the proliferation of fake offer letters.

The situation has deteriorated to such an extent that some beneficiaries cannot have access to land they procedurally acquired and paid for because it would have been invaded by groups supported and protected by councillors.

It is believed the unprocedural parcelling out of land is just a snippet of how opposition CCC councillors have run down operational systems in Harare for their own benefit.

Last week, seven City of Harare councillors appeared before the Harare Magistrates’ Court for allegedly conniving in recommending that council employees, including themselves, get 20 percent of all stands created in Harare.

The damning exposé of how councillors have taken over the allocation of land in the city was made last week by principal housing officer Mr Edgar Dzehonye in his evidence presented before the Commission of Inquiry into the matter of Local Governance by Harare City.

The commission, chaired by retired judge Justice Maphios Cheda, was appointed by President Mnangagwa in May to probe how the city has been managed.

“Under the regularisation exercise, the allocation authority is stripped of his powers and is clothed with clerical duties,” said Mr Dzehonye in his affidavit.

“The housing waiting list is conveniently suspended . . . in favour of relying on the register from councillors submitted through the district officers. This position demonstrates a dangerous position where policymakers connive to break the law and policy whenever it suits their personal private interests.”

To complete the effective side lining of the housing department, Mr Dzehonye said, the councillors created a new position of head of human shelter services, to which they seconded Mr Funny Machipisa.

“Machipisa had allowed the political project to flourish by way of aborting his duties as the district administration manager, and so was rewarded with the position to oversee the allocation of regularised illegally invaded land,” he said.

“He was appointed to a position that had similar functions with those that I perform and that are part of my contract of employment. He operated without a job description from November 2023 to July 2024. All this period, he was duplicating my duties. The pressure for such an anomaly was instigated by some councillors, led by Cllr Blessing Duma.”

Mr Dzehonye cited several cases in which barons were allocated pieces of land by the councillors.

He gave examples of the Svikiro Pay Scheme, under its chairperson Godspower Siziba, which was allocated 183 stands in Tafara, Warren Park and Greendale; the Tafara Pay Scheme, Maize View and Harare Housing Pay, all under Everson Luni, which were given a total of 183 stands in Tafara; as well as the New Dawn Pay Scheme, under Voyage Dhambuza, which got 70 stands in Warren Park and Park View.

Mr Dzehonye said the stand allocation procedure was that one had to be registered on the housing waiting list and wait for a minimum of six months before being considered.

But the councillors were bypassing the process.

“Land that was properly allocated to lawful beneficiaries was invaded at the instigation of opposition political players,” said Mr Dzehonye. Groups aligned to the truant councillors were hand picked and placed on the regularisation lists despite the groups having invaded wetlands and institutional sites.

“In other instances, so daring was the thievery that court orders obtained to evict land invaders were blatantly disregarded on account of political expediency.”

The regularisation being implemented by the councillors, Mr Dzehonye said, was now designed to politically fund opposition agendas.

“It is exercised with impunity. There is no respect of the rule of law in its implementation,” he said.

“The exercise is totally against the prevailing housing policy, as set out in the preamble to the policy. The preamble states that the director of housing and community services is the allocation authority of residential land, who is charged with the responsibility to allocate the land in a fair, equitable and transparent manner.” He added that there were deliberate efforts by the councillors to double-allocate land through passing “scandalous resolutions”, as in the case of a piece of land in Donnybrook.

“There is serious misrepresentation of facts on this piece of land. The misrepresentation is deliberately so for those touting to obfuscate facts,” he said. “The land was partnered with Shelter Zimbabwe on 15 October 2016 and one with Pure Gold Housing Trust on June 2017. The partnerships were consummated with the express blessing of councillors.

“The real issue behind the misrepresentation on this matter is that Cllr Duma and his team are fraternising with land barons operating under the names Highserve Housing Pay Scheme and Rand Du Toit to stifle the housing development project being undertaken.”

Mr Dzehonye said the post-election period saw a sophisticated level of criminal enterprise in land management, with the councillors’ strategy shifting to internal structures in a bid to populate them with their stooges.

Cllr Duma has since appeared before the commission of inquiry, where he said the councillors had been directed by former CCC leader Nelson Chamisa to fast-track regularisation of housing cooperatives in the run-up to the 2023 harmonised elections.

This was in a bid to increase Chamisa’s urban vote and counter President Mnangagwa’s Presidential Title Deeds Programme.