adminThe results of the regularisation of informal settlements and the mess created by land barons are now coming through with the granting of title deeds to Epworth residents and with progress on other settlements well advanced.
This was a promise made by President Mnangagwa last year and over the weekend he was delivering at a special ceremony in Epworth.
The few months between promise and delivery was to allow a range of Government agencies to do the surveying and complete the paperwork, since the first title deed for any stand is a very precise legal document, giving the exact size and location of the stand.
Subsequent transfers can be far more rapid since all that is required is a reference to that original deed.
This granting of title deeds to those who were conned by land barons is a vital step, giving the standholders the security they need since almost all have built their houses that, without a deed, are still deemed “illegal structures”, no matter how well constructed.
But in many ways the title deeds, while a vital step and the most important step, is still only the first step. Converting the settlements needs many more steps before the stand owners are living in the sort of environment that most urban Zimbabweans would regard as normal, or at least as normal once inefficient or corrupt city councils have been replaced by ones doing their duty.
The new owners now need proper roads, piped water supplies, sewers, schools, clinics, shopping centres, at least light industrial areas for the maintenance businesses, and the recreation areas and parks and all the other facilities, that proper town planning demands as a matter of course.
Normally this is all done before any stands are sold and before anyone starts building. Developers, both private and public, are supposed to at least plan for all the services and put in the roads, water pipes, and sewers and arrange for the electricity supply.
Land has to be reserved for schools and clinics and public open space, with the relevant local authority or ministry doing the actual building.
Developers get the right to designate some of the land for commercial and industrial use, in places laid down in the area plan so they are accessible, provide the services, but do not create new nuisances.
These stands can be then sold at much higher prices to private investors and so recoup other development costs or create their profits for a private developer.
This now has to be done in arrears on the land baron suburbs and the new local authorities, such as Epworth Area Board, and this will cost a lot of money and will almost certainly require a combined effort by Government, local authorities and the land owners themselves.
In normal development, the purchase price of the stands without buildings, the land value on the local authority valuation rolls, includes the basic service development.
It is this price to cover the services which turns farmland, which is very cheap or even free if it is already public land, into urban land.
Unfortunately the land barons sold the stands without services, snatched the cash and vanished. They just carved up free farmland. It is still worthwhile to hunt them down and extract as much as possible back, a civil process although it can be tied into criminal charges.
But a lot of the land thieves are by now broke, having squandered what they charged although if they can be tracked down they can still be hit.
Not all costs of new suburbs were carried by legal suburban developers and the subsequent buyers of the stands. Local authorities used their own funds to extend the highways to the entrance of a new suburb, and to put in the bulk water main and any needed reservoirs and the trunk sewer.
This made sense as these were the costs to connect a large group of new ratepayers to an expanding city, and the extra rates would within a year or two pay for those bulk services.
Even services like schools and clinics could be developed out of rates, since rates are supposed to contain elements to provide such services. But there are limits to ask those already with the services paid out of rates pay for the services for those without.
Even when, as is now the position in much of Harare, with zero maintenance on suburban roads and the like, it is much cheaper to catch up on maintenance than build new.
The problem of bad suburban roads is that rates were not collected or the rate money was misspent on perks for officials and councillors. It is a different problem with a different solution.
Some very basic services can be provided quite quickly as a rateable expense. Just sending in road graders, for a start, would covert a lot of what look like stream beds in most land baron suburbs into a usable road.
A made up gravel road with storm water drains, the next step, would be a lot better than many of the old tarred suburban roads that look like someone stole the tar.
Water supplies and sewers are more expensive, but necessary. Septic tanks are not really a healthy option for plots smaller than 4 000 square metres and one day there will be city councils that can ensure water supplies to all residents, if the pipes are in place.
This is where innovative finance solutions will be needed, perhaps a modest development levy on rates or residents being combined into associations that can take out a joint mortgage, along with whatever seems equitable from public funds and rates.
To a degree, in the urban authorities with easily the largest number of land baron suburbs, those in much of Harare metropolitan, there is already need to rebuild or replace a lot of infrastructure so there can be some offset for new land baron suburbs.
They can get their share from the rates they will have to be paying. Even the zoning and creation of proper commercial and industrial stands should provide some cash as they are sold to help the surrounding residential area.
An additional point needs to be made, a determination not to create new settlements that are not properly developed before people move in and start building.
This requires local authorities to enforce their own by-laws, and that includes the by-laws relating to new development as well as the building by-laws to ensure that houses, factories and shops are not dangerous and will not fall down.
It also requires proper planning so that land is set asides for services, and that includes the servitudes for the services, and that road reserves are wide enough.
Fortunately, even in the worst of the areas sold off by land barons there is some land unsuitable for building, such as the wetter wetlands, those soggy in a normal rain season, so there is some land available for some purposes.
A fair number of existing schools, for example, are built on reasonable land at one edge, but use wetland or heavy clay vlei soils for sports fields and the like, and that land is also usable for public open space.
But the starting point for all this development, and for the financing, has to be the regularisation and title deeds. Rate valuations need to be on title deed plots, clearly defined, and bankers need title deeds to back loans for improvements and connections to services and all the other needs of new stand owners.
So the Government move to fix that, give the stand owners the security they have never had since they paid the land barons, is the most critical step of all. The rest can now follow in due course.
Online Reporter