Iden Wetherell in Harare
PROPERTY owners in Harare’s upmarket Borrowdale suburb whose homes overlook an estate used by President Robert Mugabe as a weekend retreat have been told to sell their properties to the government for “security reasons”. But they say they are only being offered half the market value.
The 12-hectare estate, including an imposing homestead, is owned by the ruling Zanu-PF party’s shadowy investment company M&S Syndicate which bought it in 1987 as a weekend retreat and retirement home for the president and his late wife, Sally. The previous owner who made his fortune from commodity broking in Zimbabwe lives in Cape Town.
The five neighbouring property owners said they were first approached last year by the senior government valuator, Sunil Fernando, who said he was acting for the Ministry of Defence.
Informed they didn’t want to sell, Fernando cited security considerations: “You are not listening. The Ministry of Defence wishes to acquire your property,” he told them, suggesting they obtain independent valuations of their properties.
“When we submitted the independent valuation he went ballistic,” said one of the owners, Rick Passaportis. “He claimed the valuation was worthless and out of all proportion to the value of the property.”
Passaportis said a reputable local estate agent had valued his property at Z$6-million (about R3- million). His 10ha property contains a four-bedroom main house, three-bedroom cottage, dam, stables, tennis court and swimming pool. The government has offered Passaportis Z$3-million.
The total value of the properties the government seeks to acquire is Z$20-million. This is twice the figure the government allocated to its rural resettlement programme in the current fiscal year. Mugabe made land redistribution the centrepiece of his re-election campaign in April. But critics have said the programme has seen prime land distributed to Mugabe’s cronies rather than to peasants crowded in former rural reserves.
“I understand that governments everywhere have the right to acquire land. But in view of the fact that in our case this is not for resettlement, government should pay the market price,” Passaportis said, pointing out that he had invested enormous capital and energy building up his property.
His lawyers argue the controversial Land Acquisition Act, authorising the government to acquire land, does not cover cases such as this, where no health, public safety or defence interest is involved.
So far, two of the owners have accepted the government’s offer to purchase their properties. But the government has yet to come up with the money, leaving the owners in a predicament.
“The houses are blighted,” says Peter Hartnack, one of those who have agreed to sell. “Nobody will buy them knowing the government has expressed an interest. And we can’t make the government pay because a successful suit in the courts could not be enforced.”
Mugabe is known to be obsessive about his security, sealing off the approach roads to his main Harare residence and travelling only in heavily armed motorcades.
He owns other properties in Zvimba, north of Harare, and in Nyanga, in the Eastern Highlands. In both locations people have been displaced, mostly peasant farmers.
Asked why the government had not made good its offer to buy those properties offered to it, Fernando told the Mail & Guardian: “I don’t know. You should talk to the relevant authorities.”
No response could be obtained, however, from the Ministry of Defence.