How We Started to Build

This is a chronicle of how we started to build a house back home in Zimbabwe. We have been living in the diaspora for quiet sometime now. Every time we visited home, the urge to have a house of our own to come to during these visits became stronger and stronger until in 2011. We decided to buy a 4000 m2 piece of land which had 1000m2 lots joined together. At that time it was quiet a lot of money when the USD had just been introduced into the country financial system, about USD20 000 dollars in total, we parted with for the stands including all the associated fees.

The Crowhill Views area: View from the initial two site offices.

The area is Crowhill Views which is under development by Cephas Msipa Junior, son to the former Vice President. At purchase, the developers showed us this prime piece of land as our stands. It turned out not to be when we finally went home to physically view the stands in October 2013.

Prime initially allocated stands

Unending explanations and days passed in trying to get the developer to re-issue us than to get a refund for being wrongly allocated what came out to be unavailable stands. The bottom line was, a ploy was used by Africa Real Estates, to show would be stand owners prime potential stand and when you announce your intention to move in to start your project an excuse to give another proper land was conjured up for you. It took us two weeks moving up and down to Crowhill Site Offices just to finally get new title deeds for another lot.

Of interest and great annoyance is the way the whole issue was handled. A sure testimony of how and why the whole land development had not made any meaningful or appreciable development since inception. When we expressed interest at the site office to commence building, we were told that the actual title deeds we had were for an area which was yet to even have roads and worse still inaccessible. The gentleman, by the name David further advised us to see a certain lady by the name Lindiwe Mpofu who was based at their site office next to the dam. On going there, she professed ignorance of such a mix up, totally accusing the agent involved in the sale, Africa Real Estate. She advised us to go see them. Following day, naturally, first port of call was to inquire about this mixup. The Real Estate people along Samora Machel Avenue in Eastly were nice enough to write a letter addressed to an individual at the site office by the name Sithole to acknowledge the supposed mistake and allocate us new stands. That left that as a business for the next day.

On going back to site office next day to look for Mr Sithole, whom we waited for the rest of the morning waiting for him to start work, after 11:30am , it turned out he advised us that the person who had to deal with issue was instead Lindiwe whom we had seen at the start of the fiasco. On catching up with Lindiwe, she asked us to come see her in two days time at the original site office.

Came the second day in waiting and the new story was a certain lady, by the name Jane who held the keys to the safe where title deeds are kept had had a slip in the bathroom at home and we had to wait til the following Monday hoping she would be fine by then to come to work. Inquiring about the common sense of simply going to her house and getting the so called keys proved fruitless and we waited for Monday to come.

Crowhill Site Offices – By the main road and at the dam.

Come the following Monday, more drama ensured as the little lady Jane, resigned her responsibilities from dealing with people concerning title deeds, since it turned out that we were not the first to have been subjected to these shenanigans. As a result, we where then referred to the wife of Cephas Msipa Junior, who annoyingly had been watching the drama unfold for the whole week and not even once asked how she could assist. It only took her a phone call to Africa Real Estate office, where were asked the following day to go and regularize a change of our stands.

Waiting for Jane (Red Trousers) to bring Title Deeds with Lindiwe Mpofu (in black) and David (Scotchy)

After the paperwork drama, we had a selection of stands we could search for which covers nearly the total area we had purchased. First area of inspection, was the area my sister dubbed “Milton Park”, due to its flatness and lack of features. This is the area within the valley along the road from the site office. It was indeed features, such that building there was not going to be a problem, although David pointed out that special foundation maybe required as the area looked relatively sandy. We didn’t feel it either.

Next, David took us to an area they commonly referred to as Eco Park at the time. Had an opportunity to walk quite rrlatively from the road to the area where the supposed stands were. The stands were still not yet well demacrated making it diifcult to knoww hich is which, and in some instances come across someone who appeared to have been trenching their foundation where it appeears it was a road. Talk of drama in the neighbourhood.Because of the potential disaorder in the area and the promises of getting things sorted, we couldnt really chose what could be a potentiall replacement stand for us, as it also meant we had to come back at some other time to lay claim. That time we didnt have anymore.

Viewing potential stands at “EcoPark”

So Mr David eventually took us to the Crowhile hillside  where he believed they were still a number of stands still left, but we would run the risk of not finding 4000 m2 stands in one area. That area was already fully serviced according to their standards ofcourse and the stands were well pegged. So we drove to the area for viewing fell in love with two adjoining stands. On second thoguhts after viewing a a third stand which had a gorge flowing through the middle of the stand, we immediately fell in love with as we could see the potential of a good feature within the yard. We immediately dropped the stand which had more rock outcrop than the other between the initial two. Thus we settled on two separate stands with a total area slightly above the 4000 m2 we initially paid for. After being happy with our selection, we immediately processed the paperwork and took ownership including title deeds.

These are the stands , we finally settled for, located in the area , commonly known as kuGomo.

After all this, we made an appointment with the architecture Julian Dube to come over to the stand to view it so that he could adjust our house plans according to the topography of the stands. We opted to start our project on the stand with the gorge. For some reason, the architecture came to the appointment late into the day, such that in essence the stand was viewed in partial darkness. Not the best of scenarios but unfortunately that’s how it came to be as it turned out to be when we started the building process.

A simple reflection of what transpired over a two week period just to get a straight forward process worked through by a string of people shows how how much a long way we as a country have to go in terms of promoting development. the same form of mediocre handling of issues any one can attest is the order of the day in just about getting anything done in Zimbabwe. Is it because we just don’t have a lot to fill up our working day, that it so natural to take forever to do just one simple task in a working day. I wonder.Nevertheless, in a few days time I was on the plane, thinking of the building process to follow.