Source: Hwange to release 600 housing stands – The Southern Eye
The Hwange Local Board has completed the surveying and pegging of 600 residential, commercial, and institutional stands to reduce the town’s housing backlog and shortage of public schools.
Themba Sibanda, the local authority’s acting director of spatial planning and land management, confirmed that the stands have now been handed over to the engineering department for servicing before allocation to beneficiaries.
“As a department, we successfully carried out the surveying and pegging of 600 residential stands (both medium- and low-density), along with three primary school sites, two office stands, and two commercial stands,” he said.
“These have since been handed over to the engineering department for the provision of basic infrastructure, including sewer and water reticulation as well as road network construction.
“Upon completion, the housing and community services department will proceed with stand allocation.”
Hwange faces a housing waiting list of 7 000 people, reflecting the town’s urgent demand for residential land.
Sibanda said the new stands, once serviced, will not only reduce the housing backlog but also create room for the construction of additional schools.
He said the only public school run by the council, Nechibondo Primary, is overwhelmed with demand, and operating on hot-seating to accommodate students.
The other three primary schools in the town are privately-owned.
He also noted improved compliance with building regulations, though he raised concern over the mushrooming of tuck shops in Empumalanga suburb and illegal housing developments in Empumalanga West.
“We are observing ongoing construction of tuck shops in Empumalanga, as well as continued building activities in Empumalanga West, despite our clear discouragement of such developments,” Sibanda added.
“We continue to remind property owners that any structure built without an approved development plan and requisite inspections is considered illegal.”
Constructing structures without council approval is a violation of the Regional Town and Country Planning Act [Chapter 29:12] and the Hwange Local Board’s 2023 Building By-Laws.
According to Sibanda, the local authority has the mandate to stop or demolish such buildings if necessary.
“There are also a lot of victims of Gukrahundi in the Midlands.”
Mnangagwa has been facing growing calls to suspend the ongoing Gukurahundi public hearings because of the alleged flawed process.
Matabeleland political parties have said they are also escalating the matter regionally and internationally.
Records indicate that an estimated 20 000 civilians were left dead when Zimbabwe deployed the North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade in Matabeleland North, Matabeleland South, and parts of Midlands provinces.
In June, an international researcher who has documented the Gukurahundi atrocities, Hazel Cameron, slammed the manner in which public hearings were being conducted saying it is a final betrayal of the victims.
Cameron’s research into Gukurahundi includes Operation Gukurahundi: A policy of genocidal rape and sexual violence in Zimbabwe 1983 – 1984, The Matabeleland massacres: Britain’s willful blindness and State Organised starvation: A weapon of Exterme Mass Violence in Matabeleland South, 1984.
Cameron said the secrecy around the public hearings was astounding.
“The exclusion of independent media, the lack of public transparency, and the restrictions placed upon victims — who are expected to give testimony in isolation, without public oversight or legal safeguards — point not to a genuine process of truth-telling and reconciliation, but rather to a tightly managed exercise in historical revisionism,” she said.
“For those who have waited decades to have their suffering acknowledged, only to face yet another state-controlled mechanism devoid of impartiality, this moment may feel like a final betrayal.”
Other researchers have categorised Gukurahundia crime against humanity, and in some frameworks, genocide.
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