Murambatsvina victims face fresh evictions

via Murambatsvina victims face fresh evictions – New Zimbabwe  07/10/2015

OVER 20 000 victims of government’s cruel clean-up campaign that, according to the United Nations left almost a million homeless, are staring the barrel again.

The Whitecliff residents, settled on the private property illegally by government, will have to move again after property magnate Eddies Pfugari this week decided to enforce a 2012 Supreme Court order, granting him his right to ownership of the over 1000 hectare farm on the north-western fringes of the capital.

Pfugari’s lawyer, George Gapu of Scanlen and Holderness, confirmed his client had moved to have the beneficiaries of government’s Operation Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle forced off the property.

“We have sought the assistance of the deputy Sheriff to remove those people settled on the private property,” was all Gapu could say.

Insiders told Newzimbabwe.com that at least 20 000 people will be affected by the move but blamed government for failing to act when the courts ruled against the state.

“Government knew this was coming. They tried to avert this scenario through a litany of appeals that did not have legal merit and now they will have to find these people alternative places.

“The rains are almost upon us and some of these people had put in a lot of money to develop the small houses that had been allocated,” the source said.

Government resettled desperate victims of its clean-up campaign code named Operation Murambatsvina/ Drive out the filth in the dead of the 2005 winter but Pfugari, who bought the land at the end of the 90s, went to court and won his case.

Government approached the Supreme Court as well as the Administrative Court but lost and following another appeal on November 21, 2012, Justice Vernanda Ziyambi ruled in Pfugari’s favour.

Gapu however said they had issued eviction orders “to a select few but we will enforce the order in its entirety”.

In the past few weeks many Harare residents who have acquired stands on illegally gotten land have had their homes destroyed by council amid protests from human rights activists now demanding that Mayor Bernard Manyenyeni be sacked.