Porta Farm – Scores of residents of a squatter camp outside Harare on Thursday fought running battles with municipal workers and police during what the residents said was an attempt to evict them, witnesses said.

The government has in recent weeks been trying to evict the several thousands of Port Farm residents to a new location saying it has earmarked the area for a water treatment plant for the capital city.

But the 1 500 families on Wednesday won a High Court order temporarily barring government from either demolishing their dwellings or evicting them.

Several houses were burnt during the skirmishes in which teargas was fired into the settlement, established in 1991.

One man showed AFP a flesh wound he claimed was caused by a stray teargas canister that hit his head.

The residents were settled at Porta Farm, 32km from the capital, after they were rounded up from the city’s streets and slums during a clean-up exercise ahead of the 1991 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) held in Harare.

Residents claimed that four truckloads of mainly municipal workers, accompanied by police descended on the farm, west of the capital, armed with axes, picks and lighters to torch houses.

“They fired teargas and destroyed these houses you see here.

“We showed them the court order, but they ignored it,” said one resident George Mapise.

“We are not going anywhere, we are prepared to die here,” vowed a woman who refused to give her name.

Police spokesperson Wayne Bvudzijena said local council workers had gone to the camp to demolish houses of those settlers who had left voluntarily, heeding an earlier government call.

“But for one reason or another the residents turned on the council employees, necessitating the police to fire some teargas,” said Bvudzijena.

Edited by Elmarie Jack

Source: News24.Com
URL: http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/Zimbabwe/…/p>