The Commission of Inquiry into Harare City Council operations since 2017 has uncovered widespread corruption in the administration of the capital city’s land with Housing Principal Officer Edgar Dzehonye testifying that “land barons now operate like war lords to the extent that Harare is now a replica of Somalia.”
Testifying before the Justice Maphios Cheda-led Commission in Harare on Tuesday, Dzehonye stated that the city has been captured by land barons to an extent that town planning procedures are no longer followed.
Dzehonye added that land barons are acting like warlords, creating a situation akin to Somalia.
“Proper town planning procedures and processes have been thrown out of the window and into the trash can. Through regularisation, the basic tenets of land management have been relegated to the dustbin,” he said.
“Land barons now operate like war lords to the extent that Harare is now a replica of Somalia. Land barons are now categorised by their wards as they use complicit Councillors as their conduits to get Council protection from eviction.”
Dzehonye said he reported these crimes, but in February 2020, he was surprisingly accused and made to sign a warned and cautioned statement.
He believes that law enforcement agents were colluding with the perpetrators to dilute the cases he had reported, and that his arrest was an attempt to stifle the cases in court.
He said the state later dropped the charges against him.
Perpetrators would identify open spaces, obtain layout plans, and create fake stands by editing the plans on tracing paper.
“Sometime in February 2019, During the course of doing my duties, I came across cases involving circulation of fraudulent allocation letters.
“I noted that these suspects had either generated the allocation letters fraudulently or circulated them to unsuspecting individual members of the public.
“I proceeded to make a report of fraud against the suspects at Harare Central Police Station under case number CR 848/02/19, I waited for feedback on the matter until May 2019, when I went back to Harare Central Police Station to check on the progress of the case.
“I was told that the case was referred to Kuwadzana Police Station, where I proceeded to make follow-ups with Kuwadzana Police Station.
“At Kuwadzana Police Station, I was advised that the records for my report were missing. I made fresh reports against the same suspects since the matter was to be initially handled by Kuwadzana, ZRP.
“The cases were recorded under CR 96/05/19 and CR/199/05/19. The cases were forwarded to ZRP CCU at Harare Central under case reference DR. 39/05/19 and DR 38/05/19 respectively.”
Dzehonye further stated: “The modus operandi on these illegal stand sales was such that the perpetrators of the crime would look for open spaces within Harare and proceed to look for the layout plans that consisted of stands with those open spaces.
“They would then proceed to create fake stands by editing original approved layout plans on tracing paper.
“In February 2020, I got the shock of my life when I was called at ZRP CCD when I was advised that I was now an accused person and was made to sign a warned and cautioned statement before being released
“The reverits indicated that there was something fishy going on between the low enforcement agents and the perpetrators of land corruption. These were efforts that were targeted at diluting the cases that I had reported…..
“The arrests were a deliberate attempt to stifle the cases before the courts. later brought this to the attention of the state and the state later dropped the charges against me.”
The inquiry has since exposed a lot of corruption controversies at Harare City. The Town Clerk Hosiah Chisango, who was interviewed recently, stated that councillors gobbled more than US$11 million on workshops within seven months.
