The Sunday News
Rutendo Nyeve, Sunday News Correspondent
THE Hwange Rural District Council is yet to implement a full council resolution to evict thousands of villagers who settled in undesignated areas.
This follows an ordinary full council meeting that came up with resolution number FC33/2/2020 which resolved that traditional leadership should ensure that all illegal settlements and illegal structures should be destroyed. The demolitions were supposed to run from January to March this year.
Hwange Rural District Council Chief Executive Officer Mr Philani Ncube said the resolution was made on 18 December last year. He said they were waiting for traditional leaders to implement it. The affected areas are situated on the periphery of Hwange and Victoria Falls urban centres.
“The Ordinary full council consists of all councillors (20 in our case) of the Rural District Council and its five chiefs from the area. The executive management of council attend in their capacity as technical advisors to council. The District Development Co-ordinator also attends as the representative of the Ministry of Local Government where councils fall under. He gives direction on ministry and Government policies and statutes. It should be noted that this was an ordinary not a special meeting of council. There were 33 items that were brought by the six different committees of council for resolution by full council. The issue of illegal settlements in the district was one of them.
Illegal settlements are not confined to one area or ward but are more pronounced in wards near urban areas of Victoria Falls and Hwange whose urban dwellers find it convenient to find cheap land to build homes in communal lands. Therefore council resolved that traditional leadership take the initiative to ensure that within three months all haphazard settlements and or illegal structures are destroyed. The period of notice runs from January 2021 to 31 March 2021,” said Mr Ncube.
He added that council has made efforts to engage village heads and the affected settlers over illegal parcelling out of communal land which has resulted in illegal settlements.
“The illegal settlers are those who acquired pieces of land in communal land in violation with provisions of the Communal Land Act (Chapter 20:04) and the Traditional Leaders Act (Chapter 29:17). The Rural District Council as the custodians of Communal Land as provided in the two said Acts and with powers vested in it through the Rural District Councils Act (29: 13) has taken this stance to correct this situation in the interests of its inhabitants. Efforts to engage the village heads and the affected settlers in the past have not yielded any positive results. Instead the illegal parcelling out of communal land by the same village heads has continued if not accelerated. In most cases people have been settled on fields and grazing areas with some village heads now having in excess of 100-150 households under their jurisdiction against 25 stipulated by Government,” said Mr Ncube.
However, some villagers claim some of the land was issued by council officials.
“The council is likely to face litigation. Some areas where people are to be moved from have been allocated to council staff and councillors as packages,” said one of the villager who only identified himself as Nyoni.
Meanwhile, Zanu-Pf Hwange District Co-ordinating Committee Chairperson who is also one of the two ruling party councillors in the 20-member council Clr Matthew Muleya called on villagers to stop illegally parcelling out land.
“As the DCC Chairperson of the district I am calling upon village heads to stop forthwith parcelling out land. As a party we are seized with the matter of the notices of evictions given to some villagers, however, we will ensure the problem is rectified amicably and peacefully. Our main focus at the moment is to fight the global pandemic (Covid-19) that has affected the lives of our people especially in this part of the country where most of our people survived on tourism activities,” said Muleya.
This comes after His Excellency President Mnangagwa declared that illegal settlements and land barons will be dealt with. — @nyeve14
