Cross says 500 000 homes in Harare are on land illegally allocated by land barons

I want to tell you that there are more than five hundred thousand homes today in Harare on land which was allocated to them illegally by land barons on a political and patronage basis.  The amounts of money which have been accrued by these individuals are staggering.  If you take the City of Masvingo for example, there is a ranch to the south of Masvingo, Victorial Ranch which I used to administer as General Manager of the CSC.  This ranch has been taken over by the State under the Land Reform Programme.  It has been allocated to land barons linked to a political party.  They have divided this estate into 13 thousand stands which they are selling at $4 000 per stand.  That is $56 million and it is in excess of the total budget of Masvingo town.

In fact, in Masvingo town, you only have 11 000 housing stands.  This new city to the south of Masvingo, without water, sanitation, title deeds, without any official town plan, any recreational facilities, without schools or clinics, will be bigger than Masvingo.  It is totally unacceptable from a town planning point of view.  I think that the Minister has to acknowledge today that the problems in Chitungwiza are just the tip of the iceberg that you can see. In fact, this situation is pervasive throughout Zimbabwe.

I do not think that firing the City Council is the solution.  We had a situation in Gweru where the Minister suspended the Gweru City Council and put in a Commission.  The Commission awarded themselves contracts – I have the facts related to that.  The Commission earned substantially more in allowances than the entire council would have earned during thei

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