MUTARE, ZIMBABWE – Plena James Poroto vividly remembers her joy when she moved into her new home in 1995, a newly commissioned apartment block in the Old Location area of Sakubva, a densely populated suburb of this eastern border town.
The new homes were part of the national government’s response to the growing need for housing as more people moved to the city. They were offered a rental purchase agreement for a period of 25 years. Once the payments were completed, the buyers – about 1,400 of them in Manicaland province alone – received title deeds as proof of ownership.
But these title deeds never appeared.
Poroto says her husband paid more than the minimum in each installment and paid off the entire balance before he died in 2006. He wanted to sell the apartment, but couldn’t do it without the purchase deed.
“We were told that some official paperwork would need to be drawn up before all the beneficiaries could receive their title deeds,” says Poroto. “But from around 2006 until today, we are still waiting for these official papers.”
No one who took part in the program in Mutare was able to receive a certificate, says Michael Chikati, chairman of the Old Location Residents Committee. Similar programs have existed across the country, he says, and it’s not clear whether anyone else has received a title deed. People cannot sell their houses or even expand or modernize them.
“We were told that some official paperwork would need to be drawn up before all beneficiaries could receive their title deeds.”
“Without a title deed, the house is essentially not yours,” said Rejoice Ngwenya, executive director of the Coalition for Market and Liberal Solutions, an organization that advocates for property rights.
The situation is particularly worrying at the moment as Zimbabwe’s Anti-Corruption Commission is investigating allegations that government officials have illegally sold property belonging to the courts.
New promises
Illegal parceling of land by government officials is common practice, as are housing schemes where people do not receive their title deeds after paying the full amount. In some cases, people who do not have title deeds see their homes demolished because property developers take control.
In 2023, the government launched the Presidential Title Deeds Program to resolve all pending title deed cases. The government is also preparing to launch a digital land management system that will enable the program to process 1,000 title deeds daily.
“Soon you will be informed of the number of actual title deeds that would have been issued before the end of the year,” Zhemu Soda, minister of national housing and social facilities, said in an interview on the sidelines of a recent strategic review meeting.
Global Press Journal did not receive an answer from a government spokesperson as to why the ministry took so long to address the issue.
People who participated in the housing program were asked to come forward and provide their own proof of ownership, including sales contracts, receipts and identification documents. However, because many cases occurred decades ago, the information is not digitized and can be difficult to retrieve.
Some buyers discovered major problems when they began searching for documentation.
Jessica Muvhevhi lived with her sister wife and children in a house provided through the program. Her husband died in 2003 and Muvhevhi says he made payments on the house until he became ill before his death. Muvhevhi allowed tenants to take over the payments. When she submitted her name to the title deed program, she discovered that another name — someone she didn’t know — was listed as the buyer.
Muvhevhi says she was told to bring her sister wife’s identification documents, as well as her children’s birth certificates and receipts or invoices with her husband’s name on them. Gathering these documents took so long that she missed the deadline for filing.
“I’m worried now that if the person whose name was on our file had filed their own papers for our house, we would have lost the house,” she says.
The “new Zimbabwe”
Sakubva, which includes the Old Location section, was the first black neighborhood in Mutare and was established in 1925 during the colonial period. Until Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980, black Zimbabweans could only purchase property in demarcated areas. Zimbabwean cities and towns were predominantly inhabited by white settlers, with the indigenous population segregated into rural areas, except for those who worked in the cities and were relegated to black neighborhoods such as Sakubva.
This story has left a deep mark on the topic of home ownership. The government’s rent-to-own program was an opportunity that many older Zimbabweans never thought possible.
One morning in 1994, Poroto first heard about the rent-to-own model. While she was cleaning her garden, government officials came and asked her husband if he was interested. The officers told her about a new house that had a kitchen, dining room, bedroom and a separate bathroom and toilet.
Poroto’s husband, who worked for the National Railways of Zimbabwe, a state-owned rail transport company, lived in the same neighborhood before independence. The couple and their three children lived for years in one-room houses provided by local employers – mostly government agencies and private companies. They shared a bathroom with another family.
“We lived in one-room houses built during the colonial period for unmarried workers,” says Poroto. “After independence in the new Zimbabwe, we were now allowed to stay in the city as spouses, but the one-room houses were still too cramped and too small to raise a family.”
“We lived in one-room houses built during the colonial era for unmarried workers.”
So the government’s rent-to-own program offered a great opportunity. Poroto personally delivered the application forms to the government office.
“As a mother, this was the best news: we got a bigger place to raise our family in the new Zimbabwe,” says Poroto.
Little information
When the program began, there was a lack of information about property rights – especially in a country with a nascent government and a range of new opportunities for black Zimbabweans after segregation, says Ngwenya, the property rights advocate.
Most people in the 1990s and early 2000s didn’t know that legal action could be taken in all sorts of cases, unlike today’s digital age when so much information is accessible at the click of a button, he says.
The Gimboki Residents and Development Committee has been lobbying and meeting with government agencies since 2005 with the aim of legalizing housing construction in urban areas, says Nomore Muza, chairman of the group.
In 2015, he says, the committee wrote letters to government officials raising the issues. Meetings were held at the provincial level in Mutare and government officials agreed to look into the matter. That didn’t happen. The committee tried again in 2018 and was instructed to approach the relevant ministries, says Muza. They did so, but it was not until two years later, in 2020, that the Ministry of National Housing came to Mutare to assess the situation.
Muza then went to the ministry’s headquarters in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, and met with the permanent secretary, who told him that the situation of the people in his group would serve as a case study. In 2021, it was promised that 850 residents would receive their title deeds, says Muza. However, these title deeds have not arrived.
“We are still waiting and remain hopeful as other areas like ours have received title deeds under the presidential program,” he said.
The waiting continues
In the Old Location housing project, the government originally selected bachelors with a proven income above a certain threshold to participate, says Chikati of the Old Location Residents Committee.
Many buyers are now older than 65 years. And some, he says, died without ever receiving a title deed.
Still, people are looking for hope.
Naume Majaha’s husband died and her children are now all grown up. Her house, purchased under the government program, is in the same condition as when she moved in.
As her family grew, she wanted to expand her home – but without a title deed, she couldn’t. She successfully submitted her paperwork to the new government program with no questions asked. She hopes this is a sign that she will receive her title deed soon.
With this act, she says, she will “finally call it my house with confidence.”