Jesuits set to evict 1,600 families from Chishawawa for housing project -Newsday Zimbabwe

A Chishawawa house cracked due to blasting for road construction at the site

CHISHAWASHA — The dark, fiery Cumulonimbus clouds gathering in the sky showed that the skies would open generously soon and this was good news for farmers in Goromonzi, a prime agricultural area located 28 kilometers north. southeast of the capital, Harare.

Farmers’ anticipation was understandable for a country recovering from an El Niño-induced drought, which has left three-quarters of Zimbabwe’s 15 million people in need of food aid, according to the World Food Programme.

But for 96-year-old Samson Chimombe, the start of the rainy season was sad news.

Chimombe was unsure whether to plant crops or not.

In fact, what worries him most is whether the rains will forgive him when he will soon be left without a roof over his head.

“The rains do not denote good news for me. . . I am not going to plant this year and very soon they will evict me without alternatives for land, accommodation or compensation,” says this visually impaired nonagenarian, stuttering and with his voice mixed with emotion.

“I will be expelled from our ancestral land where I was born and raised, and which I have called home ever since.”

Chimombe, from Chikerema village, Ward 15 in Goromonzi North, is among the 1,600 Chishawasha families facing eviction by the Society of Jesus, popularly known as the Jesuits.

The Jesuits are promoting an urbanization project that will contemplate the creation of low, medium and high density residential areas.

The Jesuits are an arm of the Roman Catholic Church made up of priests and brothers founded half a millennium ago.

They have subdivided the 4,000 hectare Chishawasha farm, which is home to St Dominic’s Secondary School and thousands of villagers like Chikerema, for a housing project.

Ten hectares of housing development is already being developed as roads and other services are built.

The housing project is located next to St Dominic’s Girls High on a farm in Mashonaland East province.

“This is the only place I have ever called home in my entire life, but the worst thing is that they tell us to move because the Jesuits want to build houses,” Chimombe added.

“However, it was our ancestors in the late 1890s who gave the Jesuits land to settle. In turn, they left us with a Bible in our hands while they took our lands.”

A recent visit to the area showed a sorry state, where the houses of some villagers were surrounded by mounds of gravel and sand and were now inaccessible while graders, excavators, crawlers and other earth-moving equipment are busy bulldozing the land and building roads .

Chimombe’s farm is among many that have been affected so far due to the developer closing the road.

As an elderly person with weakened immunity, he is susceptible to diseases and has a medical condition that requires him to visit the hospital regularly.

The closure of the road that leads to his house is an obstacle for the car that takes him to a medical center.

“I go to check every month and the car that picks me up cannot access my farm. Our ancestral land has been taken over by the Jesuits. We welcomed them to this area a long time ago and accommodated them, before they turned against us,” Chimombe said.

At the time of our visit, Chimombe’s wife was ill and sleeping in their thatched house.

Two weeks later, we were informed that his wife finally passed away.

Another affected villager, Ignatius Chikerema (82), said they were not told where they would be relocated.

And they didn’t give them any compensation either.

“We just saw the graders come and clear the roads. They didn’t tell us where they will relocate us. They have not given us compensation for our properties. They just promised to pay us, but at the moment we don’t know when or how,” he said.

However, CEO of the Jesuit-created company, Chishawawa Land Project (Pvt) Ltd, Isaac Chimbetete, said everything they were doing was correct.

He said they hired the villagers and would only compensate those who settled on the farm before the year 2000.

“We have title deeds, permits from the Ministry of Lands, Goromonzi Rural District Council and the Environmental Management Agency. To this end, we hired Forit Contractors to develop the area while we prepare a massive development,” said Chimbetete.

“We have involved the villagers and will only recognise, relocate and compensate the original villagers of Chishawawa, not the land invaders who came to the farm after 2000.

“We do have a resettlement plan, and to those who are in the development corridors, where we intend to create roads, we told them not to plant crops and we will give them food.”

He also said that they had made evaluations to determine the amount of amounts to compensate residents for their properties, including fruit trees.

“We will give each family Vashawasha recognized corn bags, which will be unique. “We have a registry of people who deserve compensation,” he said.

“Others are not authentic vashawasha, but squatters. We have to be strict when it comes to investigating who is a Mushawasha and who is not.

“We are currently building 44 houses for the first group of people who will be relocated.”

He said that in each home they would compensate one person, the oldest, even though the family has more than one sibling.

A female member of a child-headed family that would be affected by the eviction, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, said there were many siblings in her family and that giving away just one family member was unfair and divisive.

Your home is surrounded by gravel left by the contractor, making it difficult for them to access your property.

The house is cracked due to explosions caused by the ongoing road construction work.

A major road runs through their house and gravel accumulates in the round kitchen hut.

However, Chimbetete said some original Vashawawa villagers were omitted because when they were doing the enumeration, some families had disputes and omitted other genuine beneficiaries.

“We will consider those villagers, even the brothers who are women, but are now married somewhere. Even if they are orphans, we will choose a beneficiary from the family, who will be the eldest,” he said.

In a petition addressed to the Office of the President and Cabinet, the local parish priest, the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission, Catholic Pope Francis, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the Ministry of Local Government, Mashonaland East Provincial Affairs Minister Aplonia Munzverengi, and the Catholic Commission for Peace and Justice in Zimbabwe, the villagers listed a number of issues they wanted to address.

Among the demands, the villagers wanted an immediate cessation of ongoing construction; dignified burial of natives who were allegedly massacred by white settlers in the 1890s; development of two-acre plots for each native who has reached the age of 18 and compensation for families whose infrastructure and assets are being affected by the Jesuit development program before they are relocated.

In 1892, around 200 Vashawawa people were allegedly murdered by settlers and buried in a mass grave near the present-day St Dominic’s High School.

Seventeen of the massacred people were supposedly buried near a huge tree.

Villagers claimed that the developer damaged part of a sacred stone in Nzvere, which is spiritual to the Vashawasha people.

There was no apology or communication regarding the damages.

However, Chimbetete said they had contracted the National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe to protect the sacred areas.

The head of Zimbabwe’s Jesuits, Father Fidelis Mukonori, who is accused by villagers of masterminding the housing project, admitted that the development was going ahead against all odds as they held title to the land.

“Who are the owners of the property titles?” Mukonori joked when asked about the fight with the villagers.

Munzverengi, when called for comment, professed ignorance about the evictions.

“I haven’t heard about the evictions, but I will look into it and get back to you,” he said.

During the donation and delivery of a bus and 15 computers to Chishawasha Primary School in 2011 by the late former President Robert Mugabe, the former head of state told those present that the Vashawasha people would not be displaced from their area.

Mugabe had been invited by Mukonori, who was also his advisor.

Villagers claim that the former president was directly ordering Mukonori to respect the Vashawawa people.

During that time, it was feared that the Vashawasha people would be relocated to Gokwe.

In an audio and video in our possession, Mugabe, who was a devout Catholic, warned against the displacement of the villagers.

The pending evictions come as Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube recently announced in a meeting with diplomats that the government would compensate displaced white and local farmers whose land was redistributed at the turn of the millennium during the chaotic agrarian reform.

On their website, adorned with an image of Pope Francis, the Jesuits, founded by “soldier-turned-mystic Ignatius of Loyola,” say they “seek to find God in all things” and “dedicate ourselves to the greater glory of God.” and for the good of all humanity.”

But for Chimombe and many other villagers who are about to be evicted, “God is not in the Jesuit housing project.”

“This measure surprises us because it comes from people who highly value the beliefs, norms and values ​​of Christianity. If it were other developers who treated us that way, we wouldn’t be surprised,” said one villager, on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. — Humanitarian media focuses on Zimbabwe

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