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Masvingo Bureau
There was drama in Mukanganwi communal lands on Thursday after angry villagers allegedly teamed up and violently stopped the Deputy Sheriff and riot police from demolishing homes at the centre of a tribal feud between two village heads in Bikita.Irate villagers from Furanayi village allegedly teamed up and threatened to beat up the Deputy Sheriff and riot police who were busy demolishing one of the houses at Tongai Masunda’s homestead.
The homestead is part of at least 20 others belonging to members of the Masunda family that are in line for demolition after the courts ordered eviction of the owners following a long running boundary dispute between Furanayi and Vanhukwavo villages.
Vanhukwavo village head Richard Mukari of the Duma clan recently won a court order to evict his nemesis Herbet Masunda of Furanayi village, together with his fellow clan members, in a culmination of a long-running boundary dispute dating back to the pre-independence era.
“A few minutes after the Deputy Sheriff and riot police had started demolishing one of the houses at Tongai Masunda’s homestead, angry villagers confronted them and demanded to know why they were destroying the house. There was pushing and shoving and some of the irate villagers forcibly took away tools such as jack hammers which were being used to bring down the houses and the situation only normalised after the Deputy Sheriff and police gave up and left,’’ said a villager from Muvhuti in Bikita who refused to be named.
Masvingo provincial police spokesperson Chief Inspector Peter Zhanero could not be reached for comment as he was said to be attending a meeting the whole of yesterday.
The situation was reportedly tense in Furanayi village where members of the Masunda family allege they are being ordered to leave their ancestral land by the dominant Duma clan on the grounds that they belong to the rival Rozvi clan.
Fellow Masunda family members of the Rozvi clan left Bikita in the late 1960s and relocated to Gokwe but Furanayi was designated by the colonial government as a village led by the Masunda family in 1967.
Since then there has been a tug of war between the successive village heads from Furanayi and Vanhukwavo with those from the Vanhukwavo seeking eviction of their rivals.
Since last year more than five homesteads belonging to Masunda family members have been demolished.
Online Reporter