The government of Zimbabwe has decided to stop allocating state land to housing co-operatives. The move echoes a similar measure taken earlier this year by the city of Harare. The council issued a statement in which it advised residents not to deal with “middlemen” and “housing co-operative management committees”.
However, the temporary measure will not have any impact on co-ops developing housing on land bought from private landowners, says Mike Duru, chair of the Zimbabwe Association of Housing Co-operatives.
“Housing co-operatives were not banned in terms of their existence but in terms of public land allocation until corruption is tackled,” he said.
Mr Duru argues that land barons are the real problem, not co-operatives. According to him, the Ministry of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing is investigating land barons, including some councillors that allocated land to housing co-operatives. “There was random allocation of such land,” he said.
“This has seen some of the houses built being destroyed, ironically, by the same council whose workers had approved the designs and plans, supervised the process and given compliance certificates.”
