The speeding up of the issuance of urban title deeds this month, with most house owners in Epworth finally getting their deeds, is a major step forward in the regularisation of informal settlements and cleaning up the miserable activities of the land barons.
Epworth was a near disaster from the beginning, when people started moving onto the two Methodist farms on the southeast boundary of Harare in the early 1980s and carving up the land, sometimes abetted by the residents of the old church villages on those farms.
The speed and extent of the huge movement of people took everyone by surprise, a matter of a few weeks, and it became clear that it would be almost impossible to move the people out, at least without unacceptable levels of force. The local authority in this case was a rural district council, not really equipped to handle a major influx and an urban planning disaster.
The Government decided to limit the damage, and announced a policy that those who had moved in could remain, but there could be no new movements and no expansion of the settlement. Aerial photographs were taken to see who could qualify, this being in the days before satellite imagery was readily available outside the intelligence agencies of major military powers.
The idea was that eventually some sort of regularisation would happen, although little was done more than 30 years until the advent of the Second Republic. Epworth was largely out of sight and out of mind. The scale of the required work would be immense and the challenge daunted almost everyone.
The health authorities did move in and many did dig wells and Blair toilets, so the threatened public health disaster did not happen. In some ways Epworth actually remained more healthy than parts of Harare although experts did warn of the limits of dense housing without sewers and using the same underground water supplies that could be contaminated in time by waste. The very good drainage of the sandy soil was a help.
Quite early on the Government made a smart move by defining a local board, and the community did elect some very sensible people, and that board was able to do some planning although much of Epworth was and remains badly planned. But creating the independent local board also helped create the community responsibility.
For a couple of decades the warning of Epworth meant that the local authorities within Harare Metropolitan were on guard against any other unplanned settlements, and were backed by the Government. So when there were attempts, and there several, to establish new settlements these were squelched before much damage was done, although they did highlight the demand for affordable housing and the danger of turning a blind eye for even a moment.
That was forgotten when corruption hit the councils and the fairly sane housing co-operatives, which started life collecting the monthly membership contributions and putting in the services before allocating plots, were taken over by the land barons.
And the result was a spate of irregular settlement, although unlike Epworth this time there were often basic layout plans so at least the road reserves were the proper width and some provision for the servitudes was put in, along with land for schools. Land barons did try to sell off even these necessary areas, sometimes successfully, although the authorities were able at other times to reclaim the public lands.
The Second Republic has been using Epworth as an example of what can be done, with a water treatment plant coming up to the commissioning stage, and so ensuring that the major threat to public health is sorted out. The Presidential Borehole Scheme was extended into Epworth so at least the population have access to water from deep protected boreholes, rather than the shallow wells that so scared health experts.
One reason why President Mnangagwa was so keen on granting title deeds went beyond just the fairness due to the people of Epworth. He also wanted to empower the house owners. A title deed can be used as collateral to borrow money, and that opens the door to communities within Epworth to look at how to finance the needed services.
The policy to grant title deeds also saw a rush of innovation. Satellite mapping has been the norm, rather than difficult and expensive ground surveying, to establish the boundaries of each plot, and not only in Epworth but in many other areas of urban expansion, and new technology has been brought in to make the title deeds themselves a far more secure document.
Both technologies will be benefiting a lot more people than just the population of Epworth, although in many cases it was the spur of the need to do something about the suburb that triggered the acceptance of the innovation.
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We note that while the next batches of title deeds are for long-term municipal tenants, mainly in Chitungwiza, the batches after that are to start making inroads into the development of southern Harare, where there were often layout plans, although not surveyed stands, but zero services before the stands were sold, essentially illegally.
So the developer of one major area has to finish the services, and get them signed off, before the deeds are issued. In other areas it might mean something more of an Epworth solution, that the deeds have to come before the development since the residents will need the deeds to back the funding for the services.
But the basic policy is now in place, with a determination not to allow any new Epworths, and the Government has made it clear that creeping unplanned urban encroachment into rural areas via corrupt local leadership is simply not going to be allowed. But at the same time the complex administrative processes of fixing up the settlements, however they were created, will be continuing as their residents are sorted out.
