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The Lupane Local Board is facing a serious problem posed by the villagers who bring their livestock to graze in the town’s residential areas.  The villagers are adamant, and even openly and defiantly arrogant that the land within the jurisdiction of the local board is theirs from time immemorial for pasturing their animals.  

The villagers once resided where Lupane town stands today, including this writer.  They were urged to construct standard urban dwelling units (houses) so that they became permanent residents, failing which the option was to relocate into rural       Lupane.

They all opted for the latter save for one or two residents. Now the same villagers are bringing their animals back into the town.  This is madness.

It is criminal to be honest, the town’s management itself lacks urban council management hence it is flat-footed in the manner in which it is dealing with the villagers.

For example, the villagers claim that there was an agreement between them and management allowing the villagers’ animals transit access to the river on the other side of town, and management shamefacedly owns up to this, thereby advertising to all and sundry its unmitigated lack of capacity for and experience in urban council management.

The local authority’s bungling has two very serious dimensions to it:  1) it entered into an “agreement” with the residents of another local authority arbitrarily by-passing the latter, KRDC to be specific and 2).  LLB management went on to bypass the residents of Lupane Town whose collective properties and ecological environment are being destroyed and polluted by rural livestock.

It is not a far-fetched conclusion, from a logical angle, that is precisely for this reason that KRDC management is  reluctant to involve itself in this issue mid-stream. LLB management made its own bed and must sleep in it, period. Local government/authorities exist by virtue of what is known as subsidiary legislations (refer to section 134 of the Constitution). In other words they are Acts of parliament and tier of central government.

Whereas the villagers of and on their own, have no legal force as they are not legally constituted and not only that, the villagers are not part of the LLB.

Some of them are threatening Lupane residents and LLB security guards with axes and unspecified harm and the villagers’ children use foul language to the residents who complain about livestock encroachment.

Some war veterans are literally holding the residents and LLB management to ransom by their threats. True war veterans do not act in a manner that is detrimental to what they fought for: building and developing a Zimbabwe as a bequeathal to future generations, even worse the villagers are causing deforestation on LLB land by cutting down trees to build huts and when urban residents hire labour to clear their stands for construction the villagers swoop on the stands with their carts to take firewood which they sell to the town’s residents, while LLB management is sleeping.

Lupane town has rogue villagers as neighbours.  Their activities and behaviour are manifestly criminal.

Martin Stobart, Lupane.