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Statement on the continuing evictions and displacement of families
Community Action Group on Housing
June 24, 2005

We the Community Action Group on Housing express our outrage at the current and continuing evictions and displacement of urban low income families from their homes and places of employment.

The affected communities were engaged in genuine and legitimate activities to sustain themselves and their families. The fact that they were living in backyard cabins/cottages and informal settlements is a result of their real need for decent and affordable shelter, which the Local Authorities and Government have not been able to provide over the years.

Over the years the same communities had organised themselves into housing coops and mutual housing groups with the aim of collectively addressing their shelter and human development needs. Government has encouraged, adopted and accepted these community based mechanisms and pro-poor initiatives as viable means of raising Zimbabwean's standards of living. We are therefore dismayed that Government has now chosen to attack these very same communities by making their living situations worse than they were before. Urban Poor families have lost their livelihoods, housing and all that it comes with i.e. sanitation, access to clean water, health facilities and schools for their children, creating unnecessary hardships and suffering for some of the most vulnerable groups in our society. We are particularly concerned not just by the destruction of property and assets that our members had accumulated over long periods of time given their socio-economic status, but also by the disintegration of community based support structures and group cohesion created over the years to address issues of homelessness and economic deprivation.

History will attest to the fact that Evictions and Demolitions do not solve the housing problems of the poor; neither do they solve the inevitable challenges associated with urbanisation. We believe that consultation and participation of the affected communities would have given us cleaner cities and organised informal trading. With a shrinking formal economy such as ours it is inevitable that the high levels of unemployed people will turn to the informal economy for employment and people will resort to informal housing.

As a Coalition on Housing we have over the past five years been engaged and created partnerships with Local and Central Government, Parliament and other stakeholders in designing and implementing policies and practices that facilitate pro-poor housing development. We were part of the Zim-Habitat process launched by government to find solutions to the housing crisis the country is facing. The Coalition partners played an active role in the formulation of the National Housing Policy and Program and were instrumental in lobbying for the establishment of the Housing Infrastructure bank. This current nationwide exercise did not involve any consultation with stakeholders and makes a mockery of these initiatives and engagements which were beginning to bear fruit.

The Government of Zimbabwe is a signatory to International Conventions and processes like the Habitat Agenda, ILO Conventions and subscribes to processes that protect the social, economic and cultural rights of its citizens. We believe that the current exercise violates these and national statutes that require Government in its various forms to give due and adequate notice as well provide acceptable alternatives were evictions are inevitable. It is our opinion that these evictions were not necessary. This process did not give adequate notice nor were people provided with acceptable alternatives to carry on their businesses and to live.

We therefore call upon the Government, Local Authorities and the Zimbabwe Republic Police to halt this whole exercise with immediate effect. Every Zimbabwe has a right to the City. The Coalition on Housing is committed to continue to work with Government, Local Authorities and Parliament to finding humane, workable and sustainable solutions to Zimbabwe's housing and employment needs.

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