Zimbabwe’s Housing and Social Amenities Minister, Daniel Garwe has said demolitions of illegal structures especially houses built after December 2019, will be starting again soon as government clamps down on land barons in a bid to built sustainable houses in towns and cities.
Garwe was speaking to this publication when he said:
“We made a statement last year when the President made a policy pronouncement on housing. We said those that have already built, we are not going to demolish people’s homes but regularise. Only structures built close to roads, power and sewer lines will be demolished.
“Councillors and some high ranking officials took advantage of the situation and lied to people. Officials deceived home-seekers to build, telling them that the Ministry was going to regularise; that’s not true.
“The land barons were flourishing because they had development permits issued by Government. Some of them did not meet the conditions to provide infrastructure before selling land to home seekers. We are now giving them a maximum of three months or Government revokes that permit,” he said.
Garwe also shared the government’s plan to introduce a system that will see people renting houses at affordable rates on properties built by the State:
“We cannot all own houses because land is a finite resource. So we are introducing the renting system. Most of the units will be high rise flats to preserve land. We need land for agriculture. If we continue settling people on all the farms, where will we get the food?” He continued.
