BY TAPIWA ZIVIRA
As the hundreds of affected former and current farm workers mourned the dead and tried to make sense of what had caused the fire, they were quickly reminded of a nearly similar incident that had taken place at the neighbouring Solar Farm four years ago when a fire destroyed more than 25 houses.
At Limanda, families have, with the help of non-governmental organisations, churches and other well-wishers, built temporary wooden cabins after the fire.
Cephas Chimutanda, whose small business site was destroyed in the fire, said he hoped measures were taken to create more affordable residential areas as the cost of housing was forcing many to overcrowd informal settlements.
Despite the temporary shelter relief, residents of Limanda are still among the thousands of Zimbabweans who live in informal settlements where health, fire, flood and other risks are still high.
For the General Agriculture and Plantation Workers Union of Zimbabwe (Gapwuz), which represents farm workers in the country, such fires are common in farm villages, where houses are built using grass, pole and mud.
The situation, according to a Gapwuz official, Edward Dzeka is made worse by the fact that a large number of farm compounds have houses built close to each other, which makes it difficult to contain a fire.
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Dzeka said while Gapwuz has an occupational health and safety protocol that allows them to inspect the living conditions of farm workers, enforcing it is their biggest challenge.
“As you know, some of the owners of these farms are political and government figures that use their political clout to thwart our attempts to have them improve the living conditions of farm workers. It is sad when fatalities occur,” said Dzeka.
Dzeka said the challenge goes beyond that as a large number of farm compounds have been set apart from the main farm, leaving farm workers to oversee the co-ordination of structures on their own, without expert assistance.
“They cannot afford to build brick and mortar houses, but even if they can afford, they know they can be evicted by the farm owner any day, so it is better for them to have illegal structures.
The solution is that government must allocate compounds to the farm workers so that they have ownership of the land on which they live, and their remuneration must be improved so that they afford to build standard houses.”
Dzeka added that the Local government, and Lands and rural settlement ministries must come up with a policy to improve the standards of houses in Zimbabwe.
While Gapwuz has indicated the problem of substandard housing as being rampant in farms, a NewsDay survey showed many peri-urban and semi-rural settlements are growing around Zimbabwean towns and cities, particularly Harare.
NewsDay visited Mt Hampden and the part of Harare South near the Harare International Airport, Hopley, and Hatcliffewhere, according to residents there, informal settlements are growing as there is a haphazard allocation of stands, on which people builds temporary shelters without involving town inspectors.
A Councillor in Mt Hampden, Baison Mavhuto, said the provision of proper housing is being made difficult as people are moving to informal settlements in his area, fleeing the high rental in urban areas.
“We are getting many people settling here at Limanda, but the place is still labelled an illegal settlement, which is a big problem because this means the standards of houses go unchecked,” said Mavhuto.
Although Harare Mayor Ben Manyenyeni was unavailable for comment, a senior official with the City of Harare’s engineering department said the city battles with political interference in its planning.
“Zanu PF backed housing co-operatives or settlement crop up all the time and as inspectors we sometimes find it difficult to ensure compliance to required quality housing standards, which makes our work difficult,” said the engineer.
In October, Manyenyeni said the issue of housing in Harare had been hijacked by politicians.
Responding to a wave of demolitions of illegal settlements that had taken place around Harare, Manyenyeni said, “As a country and as a city we have a divided house on the matter which also gets very political.”
In what could show the discord in government over who is responsible for allocating urban settlements, settlers near the Airport Road, who are facing eviction by government, have fingered Zanu PF for ‘allocating’ them the space.
“We came here because of Zanu PF but we are now being told to leave the area by the same people,” a settler, Petros Kavhukatema told The Standard.
Although some Zanu PF-linked land barons were arrested this year, it appears this has not abated the situation as government has not moved in to standardise informal settlements, leaving residents at risk of disasters such as fire and floods.
