Harare, Zimbabwe – At around 5am on Friday, August 14, Methro Masunga, 28, was jolted awake by the sound of bulldozers and shouting municipal police officers. Outside, earth-moving vehicles were preparing to demolish homes in St Martins Extension, a suburb of Harare. At first, Masunga thought the machinery had arrived for roadworks.
Then she realised her home was among those marked for destruction. We tried to understand, but no one would hear us,” Masunga told Al Jazeera. A single mother of three, Masunga had spent years saving to own a home.
She worked part-time cleaning other people’s houses, putting aside what she could to buy a residential stand. So, when I came here, I paid the deposit and started monthly contributions,” she said, standing among the remains of her house. Masunga began paying for her stand in 2015 and received an allocation in 2019.
She says the arrangement was formalised through the city council in 2020, when residents began receiving official documents. Her experience reflects a wider dispute over land allocations in Harare. Residents say they bought stands through council-linked processes and invested their savings in building homes.
The municipality says it is enforcing planning regulations against structures built without the necessary approvals or on land not designated for housing. The full number of people displaced by demolitions across Harare in 2026 has not been independently established. However, city council records seen by Al Jazeera list more than 5,000 houses facing demolition under 37 outstanding High Court orders.
These figures concern properties targeted under the wider programme, not homes already demolished. A council task force has separately inspected 22,255 sites to identify structures on prohibited or unauthorised land. Authorities say the demolitions are intended to address illegal construction, disputed land sales and development on sites reserved for public infrastructure.
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