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State Finally Resolves to Relocate Chitsa Families

The Herald (Harare)
NEWS
16 May 2007
Posted to the web 16 May 2007

By Masvingo
Harare
GOVERNMENT has finally resolved to relocate 750 Chitsa families -- who have
been illegally staying in the Gonarezhou National Park -- to the 5 000-hectare
Wasarawasara Farm in Chiredzi.
The move is expected to allow for the smooth roll out of the Great Limpopo
Transfrontier Park, which the Gonarezhou is part of.
The families have been staying in the park since the days of farm occupations
in 2000 and relocation was being stalled by their resistance and that no land
had been identified to resettle them.
Wasarawasara Farm is part of the vast Chiredzi North Ranch.
The families' reluctance to leave derailed progress on the Great Limpopo
Transfrontier Park, which merges Zimbabwe's Gonarezhou with South Africa's
Kruger National Park and Mozambique's Limpopo National Park to create the
world's biggest wildlife sanctuary.
Masvingo provincial administrator Cde Felix Chikovo yesterday said Government
had since identified land at Wasarawasara Farm to resettle the Chitsa families.
He said planning and pegging of plots was already underway.
He said relocation would start anytime from now as it was long overdue.
"We hope that we will finally be able to move them this time around as we are
already behind schedule because the relocation was supposed to have been done
in August last year.
"We have since started the planning and pegging of the plots at the farm and as
soon as that is completed we expect to start the relocation of the families to
the new site," said Cde Chikovo.
The Chitsa families occupied part of Gonarezhou arguing that it was their
ancestral land, which they were duped to leave by the colonial Ian Smith
regime.
They allege that the colonial regime removed their forefathers from the area on
the pretext that they wanted to clear it of the deadly Tsetse fly before they
could return.
But the colonial government later gazetted the land as part of Gonarezhou.

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