Congestion nonetheless remains high in certain households, with more than 20
individuals, mainly orphans, residing on one stand in the study group.
People remain struggling economically, and diasporisation of family members does not
appear to have brought back much in terms of economic support. Loss of backyard
structures has meant loss of rents for owners.
People have not rebuilt backyard shelters since OM, with few exceptions.
2.
Informal settlements, Bulawayo
In the informal settlement of Killarney in Bulawayo, around 200 families from the
Cement Siding area, are once more in the middle of eviction. MacDonald Bricks owns
the land they have been squatting on and has successfully won a court case evicting
them. In the dead of a very cold winter, these families are now demolishing their
shelters. They are rebuilding a matter of 300m from where they were, in the “new
line”, or Village One, in Killarney.
In spite of the tough conditions, Killarney and Ngozi Mine in Bulawayo have both re‐
established themselves, with more or less the same families that were living there
ahead of OM in 2005.
35% of our respondents representing 149 individuals have lived in Killarney for 20
years or longer – yet they still remain with absolutely no security of tenure. Average
length of time lived here is 14 years. All had shelters destroyed in 2005.
We have not seen the same urban‐rural drift in the informal settlements as we have in
the formal suburbs of Bulawayo, for the following reasons:
o 48% in Killarney are descendants of foreign nationals, although they were
themselves born in Zimbabwe. However it means they have no claim to any
rural home.
o 37% are women who are single parents or divorced or widowed, who therefore
have no rural claims on tenure.
o People in informal settlements do not pay rent or electricity and have therefore
not faced the same financial pressures that families in formal accommodation
have faced, which has precipitated the rural movement of some of the latter.
20% of respondents reported that they did not leave Killarney after losing their homes
in 2005, but hid and simply rebuilt. The remaining 80% who were taken in by the
churches, ended up moving on average 4,2 times each – before also ending up back at
Killarney!
Out of hundreds of informal settlement families forcibly resettled in rural
Matabeleland in 2005, only 8 remain there at this time. All others have returned to the
informal settlements. Of these 8, half are reasonably happy to remain rural, while 4
have become prisoners of circumstances.
3.
Informal trading
The informal sector remains under pressure, with raids by police on vendors, a daily
occurrence. Very few formal vending markets have been re‐established to replace
those destroyed, leaving even licensed vendors technically outside the law. With up to
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