via Don’t blame squatters: Tsvangirai – DailyNews Live 30 January 2015
HARARE – Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai says the government is clueless about solving Zimbabwe’s housing crisis.
Speaking in Epworth, a shanty suburb in Harare, yesterday — where government is demolishing illegal structures — the MDC leader said as a result, squatters should not be blamed for allocating themselves land.
“You cannot blame people when they allocate themselves land because government has failed them. There is no one to even account why there is no water or sewer system.
“Government does not have a programme to build people’s homes or create jobs for people. We (MDC) will try and… make people have clean sources of water like boreholes,” Tsvangirai said, adding that the government was supposed to ensure people had suitable homes and amenities.
His statements came as Pentagon area residents vowed to stay put and resist whatever government did to them or their property.
Damuson Damuson, the MDC’s Epworth chairman, said Zanu PF had clearly neglected them so that it could manipulate the poor in the area.
“No one will remove us from here. Zanu PF needed this area poor so that it can use the people. We suffered a lot of violence especially in 2008 when our sisters and mothers were raped,” he told Tsvangirai.
Meanwhile, the MDC leader said men in Zimbabwe had allegedly lost “their manhood” as they now depended on women for their livelihood.
“The crowd here… is a sign of high unemployment in the country. These people are a representative of the 85 percent unemployment…,” Tsvangirai said.
The MDC president said Zimbabwe was now a nation of vendors.
“But where have you seen a country that has an economy sustained by vending? People need jobs,” he said.
Tsvangirai said the level of fear among Zimbabweans was appalling after a local nurse refused to give him statistics of diseases in the area.
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