THE Zanu PF-controlled Umguza Rural District Council (RDC) was yesterday interdicted from demolishing houses it had leased to tenants on a rent-to-buy agreement at Reigate Compound on the outskirts of Bulawayo to allocate the stands they are built on to other buyers.
RICHARD MUPONDE SENIOR COURT REPORTER
Umguza RDC reportedly leased the houses at the compound to several people on a six-year rent-to-buy agreement from January 2003.
However, the RDC allegedly sold the stands to other people and wanted to flatten the entire compound to accommodate the new buyers.
Seven houses had already been demolished before occupants rushed to court to secure an interdict against the destruction.
Umguza RDC falls under Transport and Infrastructure Development minister Obert Mpofu’s constituency and his wife Sikhanyisiwe was the chairperson of the RDC before being elected to the National Assembly in the July 31 general elections.
Bulawayo High Court judge Justice Nokhuthula Moyo yesterday issued an interdict against the RDC from further demolishing the houses until the matter was finalised.
“That the respondents (Umguza RDC) through its workers, agents, assignees or representatives be and hereby (are) interdicted from further demolishing the houses of the applicants and other tenants from house Number 1 to 75 Reigate Complex, Umguza without lawful authority,” reads Justice Moyo’s order.
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The tenants are seeking a final order to declare the demolitions a breach of Section 74 of the Constitution.
Section 74 of the Constitution gives citizens the freedom from arbitrary eviction.
“No person may be evicted from their home, or their home demolished, without an order of court made after considering all the relevant circumstances,” reads the section.
One of the affected tenants, Ernest Ncube, said in his founding affidavit filed by Kossam Ncube and Jonathan Tsvangirai from the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights on behalf of other tenants, they entered into a lease to buy agreement with the RDC in January 2003 to pay rentals for six years and thereafter assume ownership of the houses.
“In pursuance to the agreement, I religiously made my payments and have been so paying until the respondent stopped accepting payments from me on or around January 2013,” read part of Ncube’s affidavit.
“I received a letter from the respondent dated January 17 2013 wherein I together with several other tenants were advised that the respondent wanted to demolish our rented houses due to developments they were doing to the area. We were then given up to March 31 2013 to seek alternative accommodation,” Ncube said.
He said they engaged the RDC, but could not reach an agreement and instead the local authority despatched its employees on Monday with a front end loader to demolish the houses.
“We then inquired from them what was happening and they explained that they had been sent to destroy all the houses at the compound as the stands had been sold to other buyers.”
Ncube said the conduct of the RDC was unlawful because it did not have a court order authorising it to evict them and accused the local authority of taking the law into its own hands by making itself an arbiter and judge in its own case.
