The Big, the Bad and the Hurt

As the southern hemisphere winter takes hold, hundreds of homes are being demolished, leaving families without shelter shivering and chilled to the bone in plummeting temperatures under the star-studded African sky.

The destruction, according to officialdom, is intended to remove houses, shacks and shops built without  proiper town planning permission.

It couldn’t come at a worse time, and it hurts the new homeless.

Big and bad ‘land barons’ are to blame but, of course, they are not hurting. It goes deeper, back to the common culture of ‘them and us.’

As the ordinary people lose their houses, the rich and powerful are building upmarket mansions, townhouses, apartments and shopping malls all over the cities. Their adherence to planning laws is non-existent or questionable at best.

Officials insist illegal construction will not be tolerated, yet society’s upper echelons break the law all the time and get away with it.

Many of the poor victims of the clumsy and chaotic demolitions built their homes in good faith, unaware any rules had been broken. Most received legal paperwork that turned out to be fake or clever forgeries by agents selling plots of land they didn’t own. They have not been brought to book. The government  promised to pause the new demolitions until ownership rights are fully investigated. Such an amnesty, if it could be described as such, didn’t happen and demolitions went on.

Who does the land really belong to? Much of it is state and municipal land, some of it is designated green belt, some is protected wetlands, a vital source of drainage in the local ecology, and more is owned by political or business bigwigs who left it underutilised after benefitting from the land grabs of white-owned farms two decades ago.

The wetlands continue to be under siege by favoured individuals and businesses, causing great angst in local communities whose protests and worries go unheeded.

All the while the ruling elite display obscene wealth, to wit the recent US$20 million wedding of a top politician’s son. Remember, by the way, one of the richest men in the world, tech mogul and Google founder Jeff Bezos, spent a mere, for him, $50 million on his wedding in Venice last year.

Perplexing to onlookers too is how large construction and environment-chewing mining projects by the huge influx of Chinese nationals go on unabated in Zimbabwe.

Then you have one of President Mnangagwa’s sons Collins building a huge luxury homestead estate, complete with an artificial lake, in northern Harare approached by a public road he wants to take over for his private use. No town planning issues there, apparently. Collins, 39, earned an engineering degree in China and his principal business is gold trading for and with Chinese associates that raises questions about the legality of their gold exports and whether large profit from the rising world gold price finds its way into the national fiscus.

Meanwhile, loyal fat cats are grabbing headlines by rubbing shoulders with visiting presidents, money launderers and assorted scammers.  Fat cat Wicknell Chivayo, the fattest in the photos, gives away expensive cars and cash on the grounds he is a philanthropist, but the gifts don’t go to the poor and needy. He recently showed up at the head of official cohorts meeting visiting Botswana President Duma Boko (left) and Cyril Ramphosa of South Africa.

Make no mistake, the big and the bad don’t care and don’t hurt.

Chivayo in a US$14,000 custom-made Dolce&Gabbana shirt at Sate House. The president at a police parade. The police are susceptible to bribes because they already get paid peanuts.

End note. Mexico last month held football’s Street Child World Cup. Zimbabwe, seething with street kids, couldn’t find a benefactor to stump up the bucks needed to send a team.