The Maniini land crisis continues to deepen with the emergence of a third family who also claimed that the civic association had sold their stand without their knowledge.

In our previous two editions, we covered stories of the Vele and Mavhungu families who claimed that their sites were illegally sold by the same civic association.

A 30-year-old woman, Edith Tshishonga, has emerged as the latest victim of the alleged illegal land sale. She claims the civic association had secretly sold her late brother’s two-roomed house.

She explains: “My brother was staying in his two-roomed house on stand number 466 when he died in January. We were still organizing for a relative to stay at the house, because my brother stayed alone before he died. We were surprised to learn that there was somebody who had started with the construction of a house on my brother’s stand, despite the fact that there was a visible two-roomed house on the premises. This leadership is creating conflict between villagers because of their so-called illegal land policies. How on earth can a person buy a stand while seeing that there is a structure on it? We know the civic has deceived us because they know we are poor and no one would speak for us.”

Tshishonga says the family has tried to complain to the civic association but their plea fell on deaf ears. “They ignored us when we complained to them. We thought the best way was to expose them because what they are doing is uncalled for and unacceptable.” She added that her mother, Musandiwa Masindi, is critically ill. “She is bedridden and does not want to hear anything about the stand of her late son. As a family, we will never stop claiming our stand until we get it back.”

The secretary of the Maniini Civic Association, Tshililo Muditambi, says it is not true that the stand was sold to someone else. He said the problem is affecting several villagers and added that it was a result of the land restructuring programme. He said people were told to build temporary shelters until the land had been demarcated professionally. “When professional demarcation was done, more than 85% of land fell to the other stand and the Tshishonga family had to leave the stand as agreed during our community meeting. We gave them two alternative sites which they rejected, claiming that they were watery. We don’t know why they are complaining because villager knows about the resolutions of the land issues taken at our community meetings.”