PRESIDENT Emmerson Mnangagwa has dangled title deeds for votes to an estimated 80 000 desperate home-seekers in the capital whose informal settlements and structures face demolition as the ruling party goes for broke ahead of the March 26 by-elections.
Mnangagwa will address what Zanu PF officials dubbed
“mother of all rallies” in Epworth on Saturday where the title deeds will be
handed out to dwellers who are at loggerheads with the local board over plans
to demolish their structures.
In 2020 and last year, dozens of structures and informal
settlements were destroyed, leaving home-owners and informal traders counting
heavy losses.
In recent years, Harare and Chitungwiza municipalities have
taken a tough stance against illegal structures that have mushroomed,
especially on wetlands.
As the country heads towards polls, Zanu PF, which has
performed dismally in urban areas since the turn of the millennium, said it was
aiming to break the hoodoo by handing out title deeds to win votes.
Zanu PF spokesperson Christopher Mutsvangwa said handing
out title deeds would be a game-changer and likened the move to the attainment of independence in 1980.
“I am confidently told that by now probably 80 000 houses
have been mapped and given addresses. The President will be there to give each
one an address, an identity,” Mutsvangwa told journalists at a Press conference
at the party headquarters.
“The signature act of the Epworth visit would be to grant
title deeds to the existing stock of urban houses which the people have and
have never used and are dead capital.
“We have decided as a party that we shall be giving title deeds
to urban people. This is something which is big; it is as big as the land
reform. It is as big as independence. It is a signal to urban people that since
you are living in an urban setting you need to have a history of credit.”
Opposition Nelson Chamisa’s Citizens’ Coalition for Change
(CCC) and Zanu PF, the country’s main political parties, will use the polls as
a yardstick for the 2023 elections.
“Credit is what drives a modern economy. Up to now, urban
people have no title deeds. They cannot go to the bank to borrow money. So that
is dead capital, but they work very hard,” Mutsvangwa said, while admitting
that the party failed to implement its ambitious plan in the 2018 election
manifesto where it undertook to construct 1,5 million housing units,
translating to 300 000 houses per year, 25 000 a month, 6 250 a week or 822
houses a day.
“The assumption was that the government was going to
provide the funds, but people overlooking the existing stock of houses which
have already been built which are not providing a mortgage for expansion.”
Zanu PF accuse the opposition of running down local
authorities, but CCC deputy national spokesperson Gift Ostallos Siziba
yesterday said: “We are a new political organisation, we are not in Parliament.
Our first participation in forming a local government will be on March 26.
“Anything else, we are not in government, we are not in the
Cabinet. We are a new political organisation formed weeks ago. Our entry into
the political landscape of this country will be in these upcoming
by-elections.” Newsday
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