By A Correspondent- President Emmerson Mnangagwa has offered title deeds to an estimated 80 000 home-seekers in the capital whose informal settlements and structures face demolition.

The move which comes a few weeks before the March 26 by-elections has been viewed as the ruling party’s strategy to influence the electorate. 

Mnangagwa is scheduled to hand the title deeds on Saturday when he is scheduled to address what ZANU PF officials dubbed “mother of all rallies” in Epworth. 

Dwellers have been at loggerheads with the local board over plans to demolish their structures.

In the past two years, dozens of structures and informal settlements were destroyed, leaving homeowners and informal traders counting heavy losses.

ZANU PF spokesperson Christopher Mutsvangwa said handing out title deeds would be a game-changer and likened the move to the attainment of independence in 1980. He told journalists at a Press conference at the party headquarters:

I am confidently told that by now probably 80 000 houses have been mapped and given addresses. The President will be there to give each one an address, an identity.

The signature act of the Epworth visit would be to grant title deeds to the existing stock of urban houses which the people have and have never used and are dead capital.

We have decided as a party that we shall be giving title deeds to urban people. This is something which is big; it is as big as the land reform. It is as big as independence. It is a signal to urban people that since you are living in an urban setting you need to have a history of credit.

He added that urban people who have no title deeds find it difficult to acquire loans from banks.

Mutsvangwa, however, admitted that the party failed to implement its ambitious plan in the 2018 election manifesto to construct 1.5 million housing units.