By A Correspondent- Harare City Council has secured a court order to evict thousands of families who were settled illegally on its Crowborough Farm’s Lot 2 of Parkridge Estate by land barons.

The matter has been with the courts since 2017 when housing cooperatives illegally allocated the affected families land.

City of Harare spokesperson Michael Chideme said the occupiers were destroying council property.

“Crowborough paddocks have been invaded and court orders have been granted to evict the occupants. These families have been living on council land and we have been giving them notices since the late former President Robert Mugabe’s era. They have been ignoring the notices,” Chideme said.

“We don’t really have an exact figure of how many families are living there but some of them are moving away while others are still being duped in acquiring land. They have destroyed waste water recycling infrastructure and irrigation for pastures.”

Chideme said not even a piece of land on this farm has been allocated to residents.

“It’s just the work of bogus cooperatives who until this day continue to allocate stands illegally on that farm and these housing cooperatives should face the wrath of law,” he added.

-The Standard