HARARE City Council yesterday allegedly defied a recent High Court interdict and demolished 13 houses at Tembwe Housing Co-operative in Budiriro 4, describing the structures as illegal.
BY SILENCE CHARUMBIRA
Co-operative chairperson, Caleb Kadye said armed council officials used a front-end loader to pull down their houses and refused to be shown a copy of the court order barring the demolitions.
“We are not going anywhere. This is all politics at play. These stands cannot be rendered illegal when council approved everything from sewer and water reticulation and stand numbers. Who does council engineering work on illegal stands?” Kadye said.
The residents’ lawyer, Kennedy Masiye threatened to file an urgent chamber application to have council charged with contempt of court.
“This is the same case we were in court for last month trying to stop these demolitions and we got an order, which has been defied by council. In essence, the order was to say council should not execute a legality without a court order,” he said.
“For me, there is a sense of shock and it appears there is anarchy at council.
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There are children affected here who are protected by the Constitution. So we are going back to court with two issues. One is that council has acted in contempt of court and the other is to stop the evictions.”
An affected resident, Tawanda Mukurunge, said he was shocked that council officials had refused to heed a court order.
“This is an order granted by Justice [Francis] Bere and if council does not heed our courts, then they should tell us if we should get an order from South Africa or somewhere else. What we are sure of is that there are people with interests and they want to bring other people to occupy the stands that we are occupying,” he said.
However, council spokesperson, Michael Chideme defended the demolitions, saying the local authority could not just watch as illegal structures continued to sprout in the city.
“We have been attacked before for letting people build and then demolish their houses later, so we moved in to make sure that no houses are built without due procedure. In as far as we are concerned there were no houses, but structures that were being built where we had initially demolished houses,” Chideme said.
“The city council is not going back on illegal structures because some of them are being built on land earmarked for clinics, schools and recreational facilities.”
