They Paid for Homes. Zimbabwe Never Gave Them Deeds.

MUTARE, ZIMBABWE — Plena James Poroto vividly remembers her joy when she moved into her new home in 1995, in a newly commissioned block of flats in the Old Location section of Sakubva, a high-density suburb in this eastern border city.

The new flats were part of the national government’s response to a growing need for housing as more people moved into the city. They were offered a rent-to-buy agreement over a period of 25 years. Upon completion of payments, the buyers — about 1,400 of them in Manicaland province alone — would get title deeds as proof of ownership.

But those title deeds never appeared.

Poroto says her husband paid more than the minimum in each installment and met the full balance before he died in 2006. He wanted to sell the flat, but he couldn’t without the deed.

“We were told that there were some official papers that needed to be crafted first before all the beneficiaries could get their title deeds,” Poroto says. “But since around 2006 up till now we are still waiting for those official papers.”

Nobody who took part in the program in Mutare was able to get a deed, says Michael Chikati, chairperson of the Old Location Residents Committee. Similar programs occurred all over the country, he says, and it’s not clear whether anyone elsewhere received a title deed. People can’t sell their homes, or even expand or upgrade them.

“In the absence of a title deed, the house is basically not yours,” says Rejoice Ngwenya, executive director of the Coalition for Market and Liberal Solutions, an organization advocating for property rights.

The situation is of particular concern now, as the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission investigates accusations that government officials have illegally sold properties attached to the courts.

New promises

Illegal parcelling out of land by government officials is common practice, as are housing programs where people fail to get their title deeds after paying the full amount. In some instances, people who don’t have title deeds see their homes demolished as land 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 administration system, which should allow the program to process 1,000 title deeds a day.

“Soon you will be advised of the number of actual title deeds that would have been issued even before the end of the year,” said Minister of National Housing and Social Amenities Zhemu Soda in a sideline interview at a recent strategic review meeting.

Global Press Journal did not receive a response from any government spokesperson as to why it took the ministry so long to deal with the problem.

People who took part in the housing program have been asked to come forward and provide their own documentation proving ownership, including sales agreements, receipts and identity documents. But since many cases go back decades, 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 in a house provided through the program with her sister wife and their children. Their 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 deeds program, she discovered that there was another name — someone she doesn’t know — on file as the buyer.

Muvhevhi says she was told to bring her sister wife’s identity documents, as well as her children’s birth certificates and receipts or bills with her husband’s name on them. Gathering those documents took so long that she missed the deadline for submission.

“I am now worried that we might have lost the house if the person whose name was on our file submitted his own papers for our house,” she says.

The ‘new Zimbabwe’

Sakubva, which includes the Old Location section, was the first black neighborhood in Mutare, established in 1925 during the colonial era. Until Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980, black Zimbabweans could only purchase property in segregated areas. Zimbabwean cities and towns were predominantly inhabited by white settlers, with the indigenous population segregated to rural areas, except for those working in the cities, who were relegated to black neighborhoods such as Sakubva.

That history left deep scars around the issue of home ownership. The government’s rent-to-own program was an opportunity that many older Zimbabweans never thought they would have.

Poroto first heard about the rent-to-buy scheme one morning in 1994. While cleaning her yard, government officials came and asked if her husband would be interested. The officials told her about a new house that had a kitchen, a dining room, a bedroom and a separate bathroom and toilet.

Poroto’s husband, who worked for the National Railways of Zimbabwe, a government-owned rail transportation service company, had been living in the same neighborhood since before independence. For years, the couple and their three children had been living in one-room houses provided by local employers — mostly government agencies as well as private companies. They shared a bathroom with another family.

“We were living in one-roomed houses which were built for unmarried workers during the colonial era,” Poroto says. “After independence in the new Zimbabwe, we were now allowed to stay as spouses in the city, but still the one-roomed houses were too crowded and small for raising a family.”

So the government’s rent-to-own scheme provided a huge opportunity. Poroto hand-delivered the application forms to the government office.

“This, for a mother, was the best news: getting a bigger place to raise our family in the new Zimbabwe,” Poroto says.

Little information

When the program began, there was a lack of information on property rights — especially in a country with a nascent government and a swath of new, post-segregation opportunities for black Zimbabweans, says Ngwenya, the property rights advocate.

Most people in the 1990s and early 2000s did not know that legal action could be taken on any number of issues, unlike today’s digital era where so much information is accessible with the click of a button, he says.

The Gimboki Residents and Development Committee has lobbied and held meetings with government departments since 2005 with the goal of regularizing housing in urban areas, says Nomore Muza, chairperson of the group.

In 2015, he says, the committee wrote letters raising the issues with government representatives. Meetings were held at the provincial level in Mutare, and government officials agreed to look into the issue. That didn’t happen. The committee tried again in 2018 and was told to approach the responsible ministries, Muza says. They did so, but it wasn’t until two years later, in 2020, that the Ministry of National Housing came to Mutare to assess the situation.

After that, Muza 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 be used as a case study. In 2021, a promise came that 850 residents would receive their title deeds, Muza says. Still, those title deeds haven’t come.

“We are still waiting and remain hopeful as other areas like ours have been given title deeds under the presidential scheme,” he says.

The wait continues

In the Old Location housing project, the government originally chose 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. And some, he says, have died without ever receiving a title deed.

Still, people look for hope.

Naume Majaha’s husband has died, and her children are all now adults. Her home, bought through the government program, is in the same state it was when she moved in.

As her family grew, she had wanted to add on to her house — but she could not without a title deed. She successfully submitted her papers to the new government program with no questions asked. She’s hopeful that’s a sign she’ll get her title deed soon.

With that deed, she says, she’ll “finally call it my house with confidence.”