MATABELELAND INSTITUTE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

“We are not refusing to move to another area in favour of Lake Gwayi-Shangani Dam, no! But all we ask the authorities is that listen to us and stop treating us like animals who don’t have a voice and heritage and start listening and taking our issues seriously because this will be the 4th time our community is being displaced by a so-called development project” Lubimbi villager in Binga.

Zimbabwean rural communities from Binga’s Lubimbi and Mucheso wards, Hwange, Mutoko, Chilonga, Marange, Chisumbanje and Bulilima have vowed to continue non-violently standing up for their land and their rights in the face of numerous development-induced displacements in the country.

Speaking during a Matabeleland Institute for Human Rights (MIHR) frontline defenders training of community activists in strategic nonviolence, the activists reiterated their commitment to nonviolent engagement for land rights because to ethnic and indigenous communities, land is the identity and everything they stand for.

The training which ran under the theme “for our land we stand” and was done in partnership with the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC) explored various concepts of strategic nonviolent activism and the mechanics of developing a nonviolent strategy.

“That land is everything to us, it is our history, our heritage, our life. It defines who we are and who we will be. So now when they say we move because it is state land – who is the state? Are we not the state? If the state is someone else, why does he/she come and speak to us first before deciding on the land where our life is rooted in?” Chilonga Villager.

Whilst the expiriences of the communities facing displacements in Zimbabwe are different, common threads include lack of consultation, a total disregard for community voices and agency, unclear compensation packages, total disregard for cultural and psychosocial assets and top-down decision making regarding relocations and compensation. Critically, these seem to all be stemming from the root of policy incongruence.

“I built that home together with my late husband and now when they want to destroy my home due to a foreign investor who will build my new home for me? Will that new investor be my new husband to assist me build the new home?” questioned a widow from Chiredzi.

This training is part of the MIHR Community Led Engagement through Nonviolent Engagement which is funded by the US Embassy in Zimbabwe Public Diplomacy Section and seeks to promote peaceful and nonviolent dialogue between the affected communities and their responsible authorities on human rights and development matters.