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Talent Gore and Tafara Chibanda
At least 26,000 residential stands in Harare are suspected to be ghosts as no one has physically occupied the stands against what council records are showing.
This was revealed by Harare City Council principal housing officer Edgar Dzehonye while giving evidence before the Commission of Inquiry appointed by President Mnangagwa to probe the operations of the Harare City Council from 2017 to date.
He said there was a lot of corruption that was happening between councilors and land barons in which the barons were being used as a front by councilors.
Dzehonye said there was institutionalised corruption at the council.
“Regularisation is the first scandal in the history of mankind where individuals with the fiduciary responsibility over public resources connive with criminals and craft euphemisms for criminality under the name of regularization,” he said.
“Regularisation is the biggest single most organized land corruption scandal in the history of Zimbabwe, rented land barons is given the latitude to invade council land as they wish.”
“In some cases, you will find that one person has invaded four different sites in different locations using different identification names but having the same contact details.
“This is not a sign of desperation for shelter but the motive is brazenly purely criminal.”
Dzehonye added:
“During the time when there was a debate on some regularisations there was a set of minutes which those that had regularized from Budiriro the list that was submitted did not include Hannah Cooperative, in that same set of minutes it was handpicked and there was a directive that Hanna Cooperative should be included on the list,” he said.
“There is a lot of land balkanisation that is happening in Harare, the balkanisation of Harare City land refers to a process in which certain people lay claim over certain areas.
“I think we can now identify certain people with certain pieces of land say if you want to understand land barons in Budiriro then those people will only be confined to Budiriro, there are those that operate from Tafara, Kuwadzana so that is the kind of balkanisation that I am talking about, so these land barons have demarcated areas of influence.”
Dzehonye said as council they did not sign offer letters in advance, they only signed as and when they allocated to someone.
“There are about 144 sites in Harare which accumulates to more than 26 000 stands, many of these stands will be vacated but those which we consider to be occupied will have only cabins, so many people put cabins then the come to council and tell us that the stands are occupied,” he said.
He said some councillors were fraternizing with land barons to take over some stands through regularisation and the same land barons have been enjoying the blessing of council resolution which was passed in July 2023.
Dzehonye explained what happens if a person wants to acquire council land.
“The procedure is that if one wants to get a stand in Harare, one registers their interest on the housing waiting list and is required to wait for a minimum mandatory of six months and that person has to be a resident in Harare and working in Harare when stands are available, we then look for potential beneficiaries on the housing waiting list,” he said.
Online Reporter