Grace Mugabe evicts 62 Mazowe families

Officials from Mazowe Rural District Council told the 62 households that they were supposed to have moved on October 1 as the First Lady wanted to build a school on the land they are occupying.

What worries the residents is that the area they are supposed to relocate to has not been serviced.

The area has no roads, no toilets or running water, a recipe for an outbreak of diseases during this rainy season.

Even if the roads were to be opened up they would not be passable because the soils are “heavy” and become muddy when it rains, complained the residents.

Authoritative sources said the First Lady had initially promised to compensate the residents but she has since shifted goal posts ordering Mazowe Council to do it.

The council, said the sources, has no money and has pledged to compensate the evictees by giving them more land.

But residents said it would be difficult for them to build their houses if they were not compensated financially.

After complaints from the residents, Grace on Wednesday is said to have sent her emissaries informing them that they can stay until December.The emissaries included Minister of Local Government, Rural and Urban Development Ignatius Chombo, Mashonaland Central governor Martin Dinha and several senior officials from Mazowe Rural District Council.

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Officials from the local authority informed residents at the meeting that construction of roads would commence this weekend but by yesterday there was no sign at the new site to show that work would begin any time soon.

The residents said the timing was wrong as most of them would not finish building habitable houses in the two months they were given. They also feared that once they moved, they would not be compensated.

But council officials, residents said, assured them that they would be compensated but failed to give a date.

Some will be given additional stands elsewhere as compensation as the council has no money, they were told.

Residents are furious that Grace cherry-picked an area already developed and legally acquired to build her orphanage instead of looking for virgin land like the one where they are told to relocate to.

“The way the Mugabes are using their political muscle is getting out of hand now,” said another resident.

“How does she expect us to build our homes without compensation? They have a penchant for grabbing: they grabbed farms and now it’s our land.”Another resident, who requested anonymity for fear of victimisation, said they had heard that the orphanage would be converted into a private school.“I don’t think she (Grace) is doing this project for the orphans because if she was doing it for them, she would also have considered our plight,” said one affected resident.

“How do you build restaurants and a shopping mall for orphans?”

When The Standard news crew visited the area on Friday afternoon construction workers were busy building what they said were school blocks. But there was no activity across the road where the residents are supposed to move to.

Other than a grinding mill which has stood there for years, there is no other sign to show that it would be home to 62 families in two months’ time.