Four of Harare’s top police officers have been sent on forced leave and replaced by war veterans, the state-controlled Herald reported on Friday.
Nomutsa Chideya, the town clerk, said that four senior managers in the municipal police department had been sent on ”indefinite” forced leave starting on Thursday and ”a new team of war veterans was appointed in their place with immediate effect,” the newspaper said.
The report said there had been a ”gross deterioration in the city’s policing effectiveness”.
Under the government’s controversial Operation Restore Order launched in May, street children and pavement vendors were cleared from the city. But they have slowly been trickling back, much to the anger of the authorities.
”Every day we ask the police chief to update us on the situation in the city and he says everything is under control. But we have seen the resurfacing of street vendors and street kids,” said Chideya.
Harare used to be managed by an opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)-led council, but is now controlled by a state-appointed commission, following the sacking of the mayor.
Chideya said members of the public had complained about the reappearance of the vendors and street children.
”The people complained that our police force was not effective and was not visible. We responded to those queries and decided to try a new leadership,” he said.
One of the new team of war veterans is a woman. Veterans of Zimbabwe’s 1970s war of independence are normally seen as loyal to President Robert Mugabe’s government and party.
Mopping up
Meanwhile, the government has ordered the cancellation of title deeds for over 4 000 white-owned farms and vowed to take over all remaining white farms.
Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa told reporters in the capital Harare that the cancellation of the deeds follows last month’s constitutional amendments barring white farmers from appealing to the courts against the government’s seizure of their land, the Herald said.
”Government has directed the Registrar of Deeds to immediately nullify all title deeds to the 4 000 farms which have been nationalised,” the newspaper said.
Most of the farmers who had lost their land had challenged the takeovers in court.
But last month lawmakers from President Robert Mugabe’s ruling Zimbabwe African National Union — Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) party used their parliamentary majority to force through changes to the Constitution which make all agricultural land state property.
Only around 400 white farmers had remained on their land following the controversial land reform programme, which was launched in 2000.
Most were forced to co-exist with settlers on their land. But Chinamasa said that these farms now face expropriation.
”There will be a mopping-up exercise with those farms who escaped the net being accounted for and gazetted for acquisition,” the newspaper quoted him as saying.
Agricultural production in Zimbabwe, once known as the breadbasket of southern Africa, has plunged dramatically in the years following the seizure of commercial farms for redistribution to new black farmers.
In recent weeks, government officials including Vice President Joyce Mujuru and Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono have accused some new farmers of lacking commitment to farming. ‒ Sapa-DPA