If no law says houses should be demolished, Mr. Garwe, who is going to be arrested for malicious damage to property?

When Local Government Minister Daniel Garwe held a press conference recently he made a startling statement. 

He declared that no government law authorizes house demolitions and insisted the state is actually protecting citizens.

To directly receive my articles please join my WhatsApp Channel on: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaqprWCIyPtRnKpkHe08

Through these remarks, he delivered a masterclass in political theater.

Yet, for the thousands of Zimbabwean families currently standing beside the rubble of their life's savings, the Minister's words do not offer comfort. 

They raise a glaring, unavoidable legal question.

In any functioning constitutional democracy, a Cabinet minister cannot stand before the nation and claim that no law authorizes the destruction of homes. 

At the very same time, bulldozers spend weeks flattening residential properties across Harare and beyond. 

By any reasonable standard, those ongoing demolitions cannot be dismissed as lawful enforcement.

By the Minister's own logic, reducing a family's brick-and-mortar home to dust without statutory authority is nothing short of a crime. 

Under Section 140 of Zimbabwe's Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act, the intentional and unlawful destruction of someone else's property is called malicious damage to property.

So, if we are to take Minister Garwe seriously, who is going to be arrested? 

Will the police be slapping handcuffs on the municipal enforcement officers who directed the earthmovers? 

Will charges be brought against the Messenger of Court officials, the bulldozer operators, or the Harare City Council directors who signed off on the raids?

More importantly, will the families whose homes were unlawfully reduced to rubble ever be compensated for their losses?

Of course not. 

And the reason nobody in an official uniform will ever see the inside of a holding cell over these demolitions exposes the profound dishonesty at the heart of the government's messaging.

Minister Garwe knows full well that laws, municipal by-laws, and court orders governing the demolition of unauthorized structures do exist. 

He acknowledged as much himself when noting that the Harare City Council is sitting on roughly 5,000 demolition orders. 

Under the Regional, Town and Country Planning Act and urban council by-laws, local authorities routinely obtain court sanctions to tear down structures built on wetlands, road servitudes, or unserviced land. 

When officials execute those orders, they act under the color of legal authority and remain shielded from criminal charges of malicious damage to property. 

This immunity persists even when their actions collide violently with Section 74 of the Constitution. 

That constitutional provision strictly forbids arbitrary evictions and home demolitions without proper judicial consideration.

Why, then, is the Minister pretending no such laws exist? 

The answer lies in a cynical game of political damage control.

Over the past two months, Operation Chenesa—launched jointly by central government and local authorities as an urban "clean-up" blitz—has dismantled more than 16,500 structures nationwide. 

What began as a campaign targeting street vendors and informal markets rapidly spilled over into residential neighborhoods. 

This escalation sparked fierce public outrage as families watched homes they had spent years building turned into rubble.

Faced with mounting anger, the central government abruptly hit the pause button on house demolitions. 

Desperate to protect the broader clean-up drive ahead of its Vision 2030 modernization targets, officials pivoted toward promising "regularization."

By claiming that central government has no law mandating house demolitions, Garwe is attempting to wash the government's hands of the humanitarian fallout while pinning the entire blame on municipal councils. 

It is a convenient political script that portrays local councils as heartless villains wielding bulldozers. 

At the same time, it casts central government as the benevolent savior stepping in to protect ordinary citizens. 

Finally, it directs public fury toward "illegal land barons" in speeches, even as those same politically connected figures remain largely untouchable in practice.

Yet this political sleight of hand insults the intelligence of citizens who have watched state security details and municipal police work hand-in-glove during these clearances. 

Worse still, they have witnessed this happen even as constitutional protections against arbitrary evictions and demolitions without alternative housing are flagrantly ignored.

More dangerously, telling desperate homeowners that "no law" allows their homes to be demolished breeds false hope and legal confusion. 

This leaves residents vulnerable the moment political winds shift again and those 5,000 existing court orders are dusted off.

Citizens do not need comforting fiction from a podium. 

They need honesty about the law and genuine protection of their constitutional housing rights. 

Above all, they deserve real accountability for the state-enabled corruption that allowed land barons to sell unserviced stands in broad daylight for years.

Someone in power must eventually answer for the destruction of innocent families' homes. 

Until that happens, Minister Garwe's claim that the state is "protecting citizens" will ring as hollow as the empty plots left behind by the bulldozers.

- Tendai Ruben Mbofana is a social justice advocate and writer. Please feel free to contact him on +263715667700 or mbofana.tendairuben73@gmail.com