adminAuxilia Katongomara Chronicle Reporter
POLICE and the Deputy Sheriff yesterday demolished more homes at Willsgrove Farm just outside Bulawayo as they push to evict the families from the farm.
Twenty more families lost their homes yesterday bringing the number of homeless families to 24.
The settlers have, however, said they are staying put at the farm, which was acquired by brick-moulding company, MacDonald Bricks.
The demolitions were suspended yesterday afternoon after the settlers engaged the services of a lawyer who later engaged the company.
The settlers, most of whom have little children, said they did not understand why the company was pushing them out of the farm yet the land has been lying idle since 1994.
“This farm is not being utilised, there’s no production going on. MacDonald Bricks is on the verge of closing shop but the company owner is instructing his workers and police to evict us. What’s he going to do with this land? He has failed to utilise it for years.
“What’s happening here is very painful. Yesterday, we slept in the open with our children and today more familes have been left homeless,” fumed one of the affected settlers, Vhedhesi Mhlanga.
Mhlanga said it was sad that there were some people who were still trying to reverse the gains of independence by denying the majority land.
“This is a bush which no one has been utilising, this is our land. We’re Zimbabweans and we belong here. We were born here,” she said.
Mhlanga is wife to Milton Ncube, Zanu-PF’s political commissar for Umguza District’s Ward Two whose homestead was the first to be demolished on Wednesday.
She said her family and others were staying put.
“We’re not going anywhere. We’ll take our property and come back here and construct new structures. Unless they allocate us land elsewhere, we’re not going anywhere,” said Ncube.
Councillor for the area, Obvious Nyika, said the people that were being evicted had stayed on the farm for many years.
He said families had invested a lot in the houses that were being demolished.
Darirai Mapuranga, whose house was also demolished yesterday, said she had stayed in the area for only a few weeks.
“I completed the construction of my house last month. I had built a three-roomed house but now it has been razed to the ground. My property is outside,” said Mapuranga in tears.
Yesterday’s evictions took place in an area near Umguza Adventist Primary School.
The court officials were accompanied by anti-riot police. The team used a front-end loader to demolish the buildings.
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