London even sends army to protect houses from rains, while Harare abuses citizens
While the United Kingdom is building 10,000 houses on floodplains and then pouring hundreds of millions of pounds to protect them, Zimbabwe on the other hand is demolishing houses newly built by its poor citizens.

The shocking comparative statistics emerged at the weekend as the UK government sent its army around the country to protect and guard citizens’ possessions as the country was swamped in floods. On the other hand in Zimbabwe the Harare City Council for instance was announcing that it is entering the third phase of demolishing its poor residents’ houses early 2016.
The development is set to pour shame on Zimbabwe on the way it treats its citizens in comparison to other nations.
At a time when Zimbabwe is demolishing the houses, Britain is actually channelling hundreds of millions of pounds to erect flood defences so that its citizens are safe and their households safeguarded. Several areas toured by ZimEye.com in Yorkshire at the weekend were heavily guarded by soldiers sent to protect British citizens from the effects of the floods.
The UK’s Environment Agency worked the government up on the need to boost the UK’s flood defences and prime Minister David Cameron was forced to defend the government’s record on Monday as he visited areas in the north affected by the flooding, which has forced thousands of people to flee their homes and caused hundreds of millions of pounds of damage.
Ministers vetoed a £180m flood defence scheme for Leeds in 2011.
David Rooke, deputy chief executive of the Environment Agency, said the UK was “moving into a period of unknown extremes” and would have to look at flood-proofing homes as well as boosting traditional defences.
“We will need to have that complete rethink and . . . move from not just providing better defences — and we have a £2.3 billion programme to do that over the next six years — but looking at increasing resilience,” he said.
Scientists have linked the recent weeks of flooding to climate change while the prime minister and Liz Truss, the environment minister, appear to have acknowledged that view, with both speaking of “unprecedented” weather conditions.
Even so, one new home in every 14 built in 2013-14 — the most recent year for which data are available — was constructed on land that has a significant chance of flooding, either from a river or the sea, according to a Financial Times analysis of official figures.
As 138,000 homes were built in total, this suggests that 9,700 properties were built on floodplains, with housing built on more than 90 hectares of land that is at risk of inundation.
The methodology changed in 2013-14 but earlier data indicate a fairly constant level of construction on floodplains, at about 7 per cent of total housebuilding.
ZimEye.com is set to interview Harare Mayor Ben Manyenyeni on these violations. Readers may send in their questions for the Harare City Council.