MUTARE, ZIMBABWE — Plena James Poroto vividly remembers her joy when she moved into her new home in 1995, in a newly commissioned apartment building in the Old Location area of Sakubva, a high-density suburb of this eastern border town.
The new apartments were part of the national government’s response to a growing need for housing as more people moved to the city. They were offered a lease-purchase contract over a period of 25 years. Once payments are completed, buyers – including around 1,400 in Manicaland province alone – would receive title deeds as proof of ownership.
But these property titles never appeared.
Poroto says her husband paid more than the minimum for each installment and paid the entire balance before he died in 2006. He wanted to sell the apartment, but he couldn’t do it without the deed.
“We were told that some official documents had to be drawn up first before all the beneficiaries could obtain their property titles,” explains Poroto. “But since around 2006, we are still waiting for these official documents.”
No one who participated in the program in Mutare has been able to obtain a title deed, says Michael Chikati, chairman of the residents’ committee at the old location. Similar programs have taken place across the country, he says, and it’s unclear whether anyone else has received title to the property. People cannot sell their homes, or even expand or modernize them.
“We were told that there were official documents that had to be drawn up first before all beneficiaries could obtain their title deeds. »
“Without a title deed, the house is not yours,” says Rejoice Ngwenya, executive director of the Liberal Market and Solutions Coalition, an organization that advocates for property rights.
The situation is particularly worrying today as the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission investigates accusations that government officials illegally sold court-connected properties.
New promises
Illegal subdivision of land by government officials is a common practice, as are housing programs where people fail to obtain title to their property after paying the full amount. In some cases, people without title deeds have their homes demolished when land developers take control of them.
In 2023, the government launched the Presidential Land Titles Program to resolve all outstanding land titling cases. The government is also preparing to launch a digital land administration system, which is expected to enable the program to process 1,000 property titles per day.
“Soon, you will be informed of the number of real property titles that would have been issued even before the end of the year,” declared the Minister of National Housing and Social Facilities, Zhemu Soda, during an interview on the sidelines of a recent strategic review meeting.
The Global Press Journal has not received a response from a government spokesperson explaining why it took the ministry so long to resolve the issue.
People who participated in the housing program were asked to come forward and provide their own documents proving their ownership, including sales contracts, receipts and identification documents. But because many cases date back decades, the information is not digitized and can be difficult to retrieve.
Some buyers discovered major problems when they started looking for documentation.
Jessica Muvhevhi lived in a house provided by the program with her sister and their children. Their husband died in 2003 and Muvhevhi says he paid for the house until he fell ill before his death. Muvhevhi authorized the tenants to take charge of the payments. When she submitted her name to the title program, she discovered there was another name – someone she doesn’t know – on file as the buyer.
Muvhevhi says she was asked to bring her sister’s identity documents, as well as her children’s birth certificates and receipts or invoices bearing her husband’s name. Gathering these documents took so long that it missed the submission deadline.
“I fear now that we could have lost the house if the person whose name was on our file had submitted their own paperwork for our house,” she says.
The “new Zimbabwe”
Sakubva, which includes the Old Location section, was Mutare’s first black neighborhood, established in 1925 during the colonial era. Until Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980, black Zimbabweans could only buy property in segregated areas. Zimbabwe’s towns and villages were predominantly inhabited by white settlers, with the indigenous population isolated in rural areas, except for those who worked in the towns, who were relegated to black neighborhoods such as Sakubva.
This story has left deep scars around the issue of homeownership. The government’s rent-to-own program was an opportunity many older Zimbabweans never thought they would have.
Poroto first heard about the rent-to-own program one morning in 1994. While she was cleaning her yard, government officials came and asked if her husband would be interested. Officials told him about a new house with a kitchen, dining room, bedroom and separate bathroom and toilet.
Poroto’s husband, who worked for the Zimbabwe National Railways, a government-run rail transport services company, lived in the same neighborhood before independence. For years, the couple and their three children lived in one-room homes provided by local employers – primarily government agencies as well as private businesses. They shared a bathroom with another family.
“We lived in one-room houses built for single workers during the colonial era,” says Poroto. “After the new Zimbabwe gained independence, we were now allowed to stay as spouses in the city, but the one-room houses were still too crowded and too small to raise a family. »
“We lived in one-room houses built for single workers during the colonial era. »
The government’s rent-to-own program therefore presented a huge opportunity. Poroto hand-delivered the application forms to the government office.
“For a mother, it was the best news: to have a bigger place to raise our family in the new Zimbabwe,” says Poroto.
Little information
When the program began, there was a lack of information about property rights – particularly in a country with a fledgling government and a host of new post-segregation opportunities for black Zimbabweans, says Ngwenya, a rights advocate. property.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, most people were unaware that legal action could be taken on a number of issues, unlike today’s digital age where so much information are accessible with a simple click, he says.
The Gimboki Residents and Development Committee has been lobbying and holding meetings with ministries since 2005 with the aim of regularizing housing in urban areas, says Nomore Muza, chairman of the group.
In 2015, he said, the committee wrote letters raising these issues to government officials. Meetings were held at the provincial level in Mutare and government officials agreed to look into the issue. This did not happen. The committee tried again in 2018 and was asked to contact the responsible ministries, Muza says. They did, but it was not until two years later, in 2020, that the Ministry of National Housing came to Mutare to assess the situation.
After that, Muza went to the ministry’s headquarters in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, and met with the permanent secretary who told him that the situation of the people in his group would serve as a case study. In 2021, it was promised that 850 residents would receive their title deeds, says Muza. However, these property titles have not arrived.
“We are still waiting and hopeful because other regions like ours have obtained land titles under the presidential program,” he said.
The wait continues
In the Old Location housing project, the government initially chose single people with proven income above a certain threshold to participate, says Chikati, of the Old Location residents’ committee.
Many buyers are now over 65 years old. And some, he says, died without ever receiving a title deed.
Yet people are looking for hope.
Naume Majaha’s husband has died and her children are now all adults. Her house, purchased through the government program, is in the same condition as it was when she moved in.
As her family grew, she had wanted to expand her home – but she couldn’t do it without a title deed. She successfully submitted her papers to the new government program with no questions asked. She hopes this is a sign that she will soon get her title deed.
With this act, she says, she will “finally call it my home with confidence.”