Last week, the Harare–Mutare highway became a trail of tears and desolation. At least 100 families — men, women, children, and the elderly — were left stranded in the cold, their lives reduced to scattered belongings and silence after being violently evicted from Cloverdale Farm in Goromonzi.
The demolitions were brutal. Riot police descended at dawn, teargas filled the air and homes were flattened. Livelihoods crushed. What followed was not just the destruction of makeshift houses, but the erasure of dignity.
This week, families were sleeping in the open. They were all exposed to winter’s bite. They told the Zimbabwe Independent they had been reduced to beggars, relying on the kindness of strangers for food and warmth.
There are no toilets on their roadside camp. In addition, there is no clean water or shelter.
Many have lost their clothes, and critical possessions. Yet worse than the physical hardship is the betrayal that hangs over Cloverdale like a cloud.
These were not random squatters. Many residents were allocated land by local Zanu PF operatives and were made to believe they were building legitimate lives.
Some paid US$200 to secure these stands. But when elite interests moved in — with plans for a new plush estate called Glorious Brooke — the poor were discarded.
The authorities have now erected boom gates to prevent residents from retrieving what little remains.
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There is no restitution. Instead, there is silence from those in power.
Zanu PF claims it had no role in the land allocations, blaming “land barons”, while dozens of victims languish by the roadside. No arrests have been made against those who sold the land.
Yet the police acted swiftly to jail and brutalise those on the stands.
This has become a recurring nightmare. Cloverdale is not an isolated case but an echo of Operation Murambatsvina, the 2005 mass eviction campaign that displaced hundreds of thousands.
Two decades later, the machinery of dispossession rolls on, unchanged and unrepentant.
Government must act now — not just to provide emergency shelters, clean water, food, and medical care, but also to implement long-term housing solutions that are humane and lawful.
A public inquiry into the Cloverdale evictions is essential. Justice must be pursued — not only for those left homeless, but to restore faith in governance.
Zimbabwe cannot build “smart cities” on the bones of the poor. Real progress requires justice, not bulldozers.
The people of Cloverdale were promised safety.
Instead, they were handed despair and their voices must not be silenced. Their suffering must not be ignored. If this is development, then it is development soaked in betrayal.
