Double allocation of housing stands triggers brawl

Members of two housing cooperatives in Kadoma engaged in a brawl last Friday during a meeting at Pixie Combie after they discovered that there were double allocations for some stands.

The warring members had to be separated by the police who urged them to solve their problems amicably.

No one was arrested during the skirmishes, but some people sustained minor injuries.

Addressing the housing co-operatives' members after the fight, chairperson of Pixie Combie Housing Cooperative Mr Simon Solomon warned residents to verify title before buying stands.

Pixie Combie Housing Cooperative claims to be the legitimate owner of the land which it said was allocated by Kadoma Town Council.

"We have a case here whereby we are seeing members from Kadoma Housing Trust selling stands that already have owners," he said.

"The issue is that the housing cooperative was allocated its own land in Phase Two, but they are coming to disturb the Phase One project by allocating stands to their members, stands that already have owners.

"Some of the people who benefited from Phase One project have not yet built houses on their stands, so Jimayi Muduvuri (a Kadoma businessman and politician) and his group (Kadoma Housing Trust) take advantage of the situation and resell the stands to rich people who then build houses and claim ownership of the land."

Mr Solomon said people should not take advantage of their authority to abuse other residents, as well as stealing from the poor.

"I would like to say Muduvuri and his committee should stop collecting money from people, promising them stands in Phase One because they already have owners." he said.

"Those who will do anything against the law will be arrested.

"We do not want to cause misunderstandings in the way we are doing our things. Those that did not get stands during the establishment of Phase One should benefit from the next phase."

Ms Chipo Phiri, a resident at Pixie Combie Housing Scheme, said she was not happy with the way the housing cooperative leaders were handling their business.

"We are having a problem that one stand has been sold to more than one person and in some cases we even find one stand with three or four people claiming ownership," she said.

"We understand these stands where sold in 2006 and the people who bought these stands are the only ones with original offer letters and a yellow receipt with an amount of $10 000. Other people are buying fake offer letters by just paying $15 and we cannot allow that."

Some of the residents said they had already lost their stands and even after reporting the cases, nothing had been done.

When contacted for comment, Muduvuri denied the allegations and refused to further discuss the case.

Most cities and town across the country are dealing with cases of land barons who sell land to desperate home seekers without authority.

A number of people in the various areas have lost their hard earned cash after discovering that they would have bought stands allocated to other people.

The situation has been worse in Harare where a number of land barons appeared in court recently after unprocedurally selling land to home seekers.