Suburban
Residents of Greendale have expressed concern over the continued buildings of houses on the Latimer Road wetlands in the suburb.
Diana Nherera Suburban Reporter
The residents were speaking at a Greendale Residents and Ratepayers Association meeting held last weekend on Saturday at Greendale Sports Club.
One resident said they have objected to construction on the wetland and no action has been taken.
“We have objected to their construction and then we get a court order and the houses are supposed to be demolished but no one takes action and we still don’t have water in Greendale,” said the resident.
Another resident said the houses are still standing despite an order that said the houses would be demolished.
“They said they would be demolished in April and those houses are still there,” said the Greendale resident.
The demolition of the houses built on the Latimer wetlands was supposed to begin on April 2 but the owners of the stands approached the High Court seeking an interdict to stop council from demolishing their properties.
In February this year, council gave the owners of the houses six weeks to remove their structures or risk the municipality demolishing the properties.
In a notice, City of Harare advised the Latimer Road residents that they had until April 1, 2021 to remove their structures.
But five residents from the area have filed an urgent chamber application seeking an interdict to stop the municipality from demolishing their houses arguing they bought the stands lawfully from council before building.
The applicants state that they received offer letters for the residential stands in the Athlone area of Greendale from the City of Harare between 2016 and 2018 after paying for the land.
Town planner, Mr Canaan Mugayi said he has been at the forefront of querying that development.
“Ever since we spotted the first house coming up, I raised the issue with city council to say there is an illegal development taking place and told them to stop it as we will end up with some houses demolished and it was just one house.
“Then we went through and the wetlands people; Harare Wetlands Trust invited council, the Environment Management Committee chaired by former councillor Kudzai Kadzombe, they all came and pretended not to know what was happening yet they knew.
“And the matter finally was taken to court.
“One of our disadvantages as residents is our coffers are empty and our residents’ association needs to have its own purse.
“When we need legal representation, we need to call it at will not to have to go and ask the Zimbabwe Human Rights lawyers, those are the people that are helping us.
“Eventually, we went through the Zimbabwe Human Rights and they chose a lawyer for us.
“They were prosecuted, the city council admitted they were wrong so a court order was given to say it was illegal but they were given a chance to regularize.
“And after two years, there was no regularisation that took place.
“The people started building in earnest.
“We rushed back to court to say there was contempt of court because they had been stopped.
“Again the city council was found in contempt, the developers were found in contempt.
“They were asked to stop but they would not stop.
“They carried on until there was a double storey building,” he said.
Mr Mugayi said some of the stand owners were rich people but on the wrong side of the law.
“There are people there with lots of money but they are on the wrong side of the law. On their side, there is the city planner encouraging them to build because we went to the city planner, Mr Nyabeza in person to say that development taking place there, we will end up with houses being demolished because it’s illegal. According to town planning law, it will not stand. And he answered saying ‘Where will I be, the court will ask me to say should we demolish or not and we will say don’t demolish.’
In spite of that, after finding them carrying on with the development, we rushed back to court for the third time to say the development is carrying on, please we are seeking a demolition order, can it be demolished and we were granted the order and that the city council should demolish that and the city council must enforce.
The city council wrote to them because the city council was offside itself and it itself was asked to demolish and it must obey so it issued letters to say we are coming to demolish with effect from the 2nd of April. Then the developers themselves said ‘we were not part of the court proceedings.’
They took us (the residents’ association) back to court to say ‘please hold the demolition order until our case has been heard.’ They said they were left out of the proceedings. They said they were not part of them and it was just the city council and the residents’ association and them as residents were left out.’ That is the stage we are now. So there was an application for rescission to hold the demolition until the case has been heard.”
He said the Environment Management Authority (EMA) shockingly approved an environmental impact assessment (EIA) report for that piece of land.
“Because they are people with money, they went to EMA, EMA which in the first instance declared the place also a wetland, this time passed their EIA report.
“That EIA report did not involve us, we should have been consulted and made comments.
“Throughout all these cases, we had petitions signed by over 350 people which I presented to the city planner, the mayor, the town clerk, director of physical planning and to the Minister.
“So how is it that an EIA gets a clean bill of health and did not involve our comments, it’s amazing.
“So we took them to court challenging the EIA to say it’s not authentic,” said Mr Mugayi.
He said residents at the Latimer wetlands are now waiting for a change of land use.
“That is what they are trying to sail through.
“They are trying to change the wetland into residential.
“Should they apply for a change of reservation, we as residents should be consulted, if that doesn’t happen, its illegal,” said Mr Mugayi.
