10 In Their Capacity as Human Rights Defenders: Women Harare who had their homes destroyed by members of the Zimbabwe Republic Police and the Epworth Local Board in September 2014. The houses were destroyed in spite of the fact that there was a pending constitutional case against the same police and the Epworth Local Board. ZLHR filed an urgent application in the High Court seeking to have the demolitions declared a violation of several provisions of the Constitution’s Declaration of Rights, including the right to food and water (section 77), freedom from arbitrary eviction (section 74), as well as seeking an award for constitutional damages. The High Court of Harare issued a provisional order banning the arbitrary destruction of the homes and declaring this conduct to be unconstitutional. Another case taken up by women to protect their right to shelter was that of Marange & 4 Ors v Chitungwiza Municipality & Anor.7 Mavis Marange and the others were all members of Glory to Glory Housing Co-operative. They had purchased land from that housing co-operative for US$1 500. When they purchased the land they were advised that cession of the property would be done after sub-division, in terms of the agreement of sale. The sub-division was not done, and they were advised that the Chitungwiza Municipality wanted to demolish the houses. ZLHR lawyers assisted the women to file a court application challenging this illegal action as a contravention of section 74 of the Constitution. The application preventing Chitungwiza municipality from evicting the residents without a valid court order was subsequently granted by the magistrates’ court. In 2004 Felistas Chinyuku, a community leader and human rights champion, asserted the rights of her community and her family to shelter. She was a resident of Porta farm. Porta Farm had basic amenities such as schools, clinics and even an orphanage.8 The residents, who were poor urban squatters from around Harare, were first settled there ahead of the Commonwealth Summit that was sheduled for October 1991. The government had pledged to provide them with proper housing later. By 2005, the population at Porta Farm had increased to about 12 000 people. The City Council later tried to evict and demolish the houses that had been constructed, after some had built brick houses. The courts prevented this. In August 2004 the Ministry of Local Government then attempted to evict the residents again. A High Court order was obtained against the Ministry to prevent the eviction in the case of Chinyuku v Minister of Local Government & Ors.9 Again, in September 2004, the Harare City Council tried to evict the residents of Porta Farm but the court refused to grant the order, saying the previouly obtained High Court order of 1995 had not been discharged and was still operative.10 During the early morning hours of 27 June 2005, the police distributed flyers informing the residents that they would be moved to Caledonia Farm the following day and they had to pack up all their belongings. The next morning demolitions of shacks and houses started, an hour after lawyers representing residents had served the Government with a letter reminding it of the November 2004 court order. The police were shown copies of the 1995 and 2004 orders, but they ignored them. The residents reported that the police responded by 7 Chitungwiza Magistrates Court unreported case 106/ 14. The description of the evictions from Porta Farm in this section was compiled by the Human Rights NGO Forum, and is reproduced from its website at <http://www.hrforumzim.com/frames/inside_frame _special.htm>. 8 9 Chinyuku v Minister of Local Government HH-10671 of 2004. 10 High Court unreported case 11041/04.