Zimbabwe’s climate migrants fear eviction as crackdown intensifies
Many settled in Zimbabwe’s fertile Eastern Highlands after drought left their home areas unable to support farming. Mutare, Zimbabwe – New homesteads cling to the
Many settled in Zimbabwe’s fertile Eastern Highlands after drought left their home areas unable to support farming. Mutare, Zimbabwe – New homesteads cling to the slopes of Zimbabwe’s Eastern Highlands, a fertile mountain region that has become a destination for people fleeing drought-stricken parts of the country. Many arrived hoping to rebuild their lives on land where crops can still grow. Now they fear they could be forced out as the government intensifies a crackdown on illegal settlements. Known officially as “illegal settlers” and sometimes derisively as “squatters”, many say they moved here because increasingly erratic rainfall and recurring droughts had made farming difficult in their home areas. Stretching about 320 km from Nyanga to Chipinge district along the Zimbabwe-Mozambique border, the Eastern Highlands remain one of Zimbabwe’s most fertile regions. With reliable rainfall, rich soils and an abundance of perennial rivers, the area has become a magnet for thousands of people fleeing increasingly harsh climatic conditions in Zimbabwe’s dry lowlands. A harvest of hope “I came here 18 years ago and have been living here ever since. We don’t have anywhere else to go,” Lloyd Gweshengwe, a migrant living in the Eastern Highlands, told Al Jazeera.
This farming season brought him hope. “I had a very good maize harvest. I’m expecting several bags of maize, enough to feed my family for the whole year. I will sell the surplus,” said the 43-year-old as he stood beside stacks of harvested maize. But that sense of food security may not last long. Government tightens enforcement At a stakeholder meeting last month in Mutare, Zimbabwe’s Minister of State for Manicaland Provincial Affairs and Devolution, Misheck Mugadza, announced a tougher stance on illegal settlements. He said he had directed the Zimbabwe Republic Police and the Prosecuting Authority to intensify arrests and prosecutions of traditional leaders, middlemen and government officials implicated in unlawful land allocations. “There is zero tolerance for corruption,” Mugadza told the meeting. “The Environmental Management Agency must enforce Environmental Impact Assessment requirements and environmental protection laws in ecologically sensitive areas. Wetlands, riverbanks and forests are not for sale. Traditional leaders must operate strictly within the Traditional Leaders Act and report illegal activities to the relevant authorities.” The government says the exercise is necessary to restore order in land administration, curb corruption and protect the environment from degradation caused by unplanned settlements.
The BriefWire