MPs Criticise Evictions, Arrests Of Illegal Settlers
Members of Parliament on Tuesday pleaded with the Government to show empathy towards illegal settlers who are facing evictions, arrests and the destruction of their homes countrywide.
As reported by NewZimbabwe.com, the lawmakers argued that though the Government was enforcing the law, the timing was wrong as the country is battling a cholera outbreak and in the middle of the rainy season.
Midlands Proportional Representative MP Tsitsi Zhou (ZANU PF) said the illegal allocation of land dates back to 2004. She said:
Some evictions are ongoing countrywide and people are being arrested and taken to courts because they are settled illegally in resettlement and communal areas.
The government had taken a position to first identify land to allocate the illegal settlers in communal, resettlement and urban areas.
We need to appreciate the population growth and the government should treat illegal settlers the same way, whether they are in urban or communal areas with empathy to achieve the desired results.
The Speaker of the National Assembly, Jacob Mudenda, asked the MP to clarify whether she was condemning the Executive for implementing the law or not. Said Mudenda:
The Executive is administering the law. What is the problem? You are condemning how the evictions are taking place?
However, Zhou said it was how the process was being done that needed to be revisited. She said:
I would like to believe that people have a right to shelter. There has been population growth since the Land Reform Programme and rural-to-urban migration.
Whilst we appreciate this, people are being resettled illegally. They are allocating land to each other through the village heads, councillors and all.
Mudenda concurred with Zhou that the matter could be of national interest but requested her to ask the question to the relevant minister (Anxious Masuka) during the Q and A session. He said:
Well, that may be a matter of national interest. I think you need to ask the question tomorrow. That will suggest what you are observing.
There is no way you can stop the Executive from evicting people who have illegally settled themselves.
Maxwell Mavhunga (CCC) told Parliament that the timing of the evictions and not the enforcement of the law was wrong. He said:
The enforcement is not the issue but the timing of the enforcement. It is during the rainy season and people have nowhere to go.
We are in a pandemic where there is cholera and people are being displaced at this particular time.
We have people on farms who are being evicted when they have planted their crops and they are told to leave within seven days.
According to human rights lawyers, hundreds of villagers across the country have been evicted from their ancestral land by the Government for allegedly occupying gazetted land without lawful authority.
Some of the villagers have been in occupation of their land for more than 40 years and made tremendous improvements to their land.
Critics have dubbed the ongoing evictions “Murambatsvina 2” alluding to Operation Murambatsvina which was a large-scale, slum clearance operation in urban areas which was conducted in 2005.
An estimated 700 000 people lost their homes and/or livelihoods, with a further 2.4 million people indirectly affected. An estimated 92 460 homes were destroyed during the blitz.
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