“How Dare You Take Us Out of the Land of Our Ancestry?”

Abstract

This article examines the laws relating to access to communal land and their effectiveness in protecting the villagers from arbitrary evictions for development purposes. These laws are further discussed in the context of specific examples where evictions that resulted in the displacement of people from their ancestral lands took place. ARDA Transau where local inhabitants were displaced to make way for diamond mining in Chiadzwa, and Mutoko where two wards were abandoned as a result of blasting during extraction of black granite are used as good examples. A discussion of these examples shows that the villagers did not only lose their land but also their ancestral connections and historically formed family ties. The compensation and the required notices were insignificant and were not in line with relevant international and domestic laws that govern evictions and displacements in Zimbabwe. These include the Constitution of Zimbabwe that requires that in evictions of that nature, the acquiring authority must give adequate notices and compensation. Instead of benefiting from the resources that naturally accrues to them, the villagers slipped into extreme poverty. In addition, rural district councils did not benefit meaningfully from the extraction of such minerals. On the other hand, the mining companies became beneficiaries and were substantially enriched.