The Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) has intervened to save close to 20 villagers in Nyanga who are up in arms with their local authority for seeking the services of the army and the police to evict them from Sarutani Village.
BY OBEY MANAYITI
The lawyers have since written to Nyanga Rural District Council advising it to stop the intended evictions and allow the villagers an opportunity to present their case arguing the evictions would be unlawful and should be stopped forthwith.
According to ZLHR, on June 25 this year, NRDC officials went to Sarutani in the company of police officers and soldiers where they gave the villagers up to July 1 to stop making any developments and vacate their homesteads.
“Our clients advise that on the 25th June 2015 council officials in the company of police officers and soldiers gave them an ultimatum to vacate the place where they are staying,” read a letter from ZLHR dated July 6 addressed to Nyanga council.
“Our clients were not given an opportunity to object to the action by the council to evict them.
“Our clients were allocated the said land by traditional leadership and they genuinely believed that traditional leaders have such powers to allocate them land as has been the practice in the area.
“Our clients have been paying levy to council which levy council accepted without questioning the legality of their occupation of the land in question. The purported unilateral prohibition order by the council to evict our clients without following the due process of the law is unlawful,” ZLHR said.
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In its prohibition order, council said the villagers were not supposed to construct any more buildings at the village or cultivate the land.
ZLHR argues that in terms of section 74 of the Constitution, no person may be evicted from their home, or have their home demolished without an order of the court made after considering all relevant circumstances.
“We have been instructed to demand, as we hereby do, that council reverses its decision to evict our clients without following the due process of the law, failure of which we have strict instructions to approach courts of law for a remedy, costs of suit which will be borne by council,” ZLHR said.
