BY MUNYARADZI BLESSING DOMA
The Zimbabwe Women Against Corruption Trust (ZWACT) which recently successfully launched its report titled, “Gendered impact of land corruption and displacements on women’s access to social-economic rights in Zimbabwe”, is now working on implementing the research findings.
Speaking on the sidelines of the launch, ZWACT Executive Director, Sandra Matendere, said while the research was carried out in Masvingo and Manicaland, it was a fact that displacements are happening in various other provinces, hence when resources permit, they will move to other areas.
“After launching this report, our next step is to publicize our research findings, on various platforms.
“And another point of action is we are going to engage the Parliament and also local authorities, sharing with them our findings and recommendations.
“And very soon, we are going to have an engagement with the Parliamentarians and we are going to give them the recommendations and also influence policy reforms in terms of land allocation and also the reactions of the governments when displacements take place.
“These are the issues which want to be addressed, especially on compensation in terms of the gendered approach in terms of addressing these displacements,” said Matendere.
She added: “these issues of displacements are happening countrywide so if resources allow, we are going to do similar engagements and researches in various provinces so that we see which area is affected the most in terms of the land corruption so that it can be addressed.”
Matendere said in these two provinces where the research was conducted, evictions took place, leading to women experiencing a lot.
“So we went to these areas to find out how these issues of land corruption and displacements affect women and girls in those communities.
“So today we were sharing the findings from the report and basically, it shows that a lot of women who are staying there, they got the land from the traditional leaders from those communities.
“But however they didn’t have the title deeds and they were settling in State land which is not allowed for them to reside. So the issue is why are the evictions happening this year after 10 years of settling in these communities.
“So we wanted to find out how we can chip in, in terms of coming up with policies or recommendations to the policy makers on the existing legal frameworks in terms of the land distribution to have a gender lens in terms of land distribution because we have seen that the evictions were done arbitrarily without protecting the rights of women especially those with disability, they were affected by these evictions.
“And also we wanted to see the existing legal frameworks which allow people to settle and they are evicted from their communities,” she said.
Matendere added that another issue that came out from the report is that women lost their livelihoods from the evictions, as some of them were not evicted physically but emotionally. She added that in some of the court cases, the women were represented by some human rights lawyers pertaining to the evictions and they won the cases.
“Regardless of winning the case, the challenge is that they were affected psychologically because of the uncertainty of their stay in these communities, they are not sure when they will be evicted again from those communities.
“So they won’t make any meaningful developments in these communities. So it is affecting them, so they actually need support, psychologically or counselling because most of them they have been affected.
“There are also some women who are from migrant backgrounds, they bought the land from the local leadership because they don’t have anywhere they can stay, so these are their only homes, so evicting them from those places it’s a mammoth task, it’s a challenge to them, so it’s something that is affecting these women.
“So we want our policy makers to assist in terms of implementing the existing policies and also to amend the legal frameworks that are allowing the disagreement in terms of who owns which land. Because as it stands, some local authorities are allocating land and then the village heads are also allocating, so we need a single framework which is clear on who owns land, who has the power to allocate land,” she added.
