Hwange to release 600 housing stands

The Hwange Local Board has completed the surveying and pegging of 600 residential, commercial and institutional stands as part of efforts to reduce the town's housing backlog and address the shortage of public schools.

The acting director of spatial planning and land management, Themba Sibanda, confirmed that the stands have now been handed over to the engineering department for servicing before allocation to beneficiaries.

"As a department, we successfully carried out the surveying and pegging of 600 residential stands (both medium- and low-density), along with three primary school sites, two office stands, and two commercial stands," Sibanda said.

He added that the engineering department will provide essential infrastructure, including sewer and water reticulation as well as road networks. Once complete, the housing and community services department will oversee the allocation process.

Hwange currently has a housing waiting list of about 7 000 people, underscoring the urgent demand for residential land. Sibanda noted that the new stands would not only ease the housing shortage but also create space for the construction of additional schools.

He pointed out that Nechibondo Primary, the only council-run school, is struggling to meet demand and is operating on hot-seating to accommodate pupils. The other three primary schools in the town are privately owned.

While compliance with building regulations has improved, Sibanda raised concerns over the mushrooming of tuck shops in Empumalanga suburb and illegal housing developments in Empumalanga West. He reminded residents that any structure built without council approval violates the Regional Town and Country Planning Act [Chapter 29:12] and the Hwange Local Board's 2023 Building By-Laws. Such buildings, he warned, risk being stopped or demolished.

Meanwhile, national attention remains fixed on the ongoing Gukurahundi hearings, with fresh calls for President Emmerson Mnangagwa to suspend the process amid accusations of bias and lack of transparency.

Matabeleland political parties have vowed to escalate the matter regionally and internationally, citing flawed procedures that exclude independent oversight. Records show that an estimated 20 000 civilians were killed during the Gukurahundi massacres in Matabeleland North, Matabeleland South and parts of Midlands when the Fifth Brigade was deployed in the 1980s.

International researcher Hazel Cameron, who has extensively documented the atrocities, has criticised the process as a betrayal of victims. "The exclusion of independent media, the lack of public transparency, and the restrictions placed upon victims… point not to a genuine process of truth-telling and reconciliation, but rather to a tightly managed exercise in historical revisionism," Cameron said.

For many survivors who have waited decades for acknowledgement, she added, the state-led mechanism "may feel like a final betrayal."

Other researchers have categorised Gukurahundi as a crime against humanity, with some frameworks even classifying it as genocide.