Zimbabwe’s climate migrants fear eviction as crackdown intensifies

Mutare, Zimbabwe – New homesteads cling to the slopes of Zimbabwe’s Eastern Highlands, a fertile mountain region that has become a destination for people fleeing drought-stricken parts of the country.

Many arrived hoping to rebuild their lives on land where crops can still grow. Now they fear they could be forced out as the government intensifies a crackdown on illegal settlements.

Known officially as “illegal settlers” and sometimes derisively as “squatters”, many say they moved here because increasingly erratic rainfall and recurring droughts had made farming difficult in their home areas.

Stretching about 320 km from Nyanga to Chipinge district along the Zimbabwe-Mozambique border, the Eastern Highlands remain one of Zimbabwe’s most fertile regions.

With reliable rainfall, rich soils and an abundance of perennial rivers, the area has become a magnet for thousands of people fleeing increasingly harsh climatic conditions in Zimbabwe’s dry lowlands.

“I came here 18 years ago and have been living here ever since. We don’t have anywhere else to go,” Lloyd Gweshengwe, a migrant living in the Eastern Highlands, told Al Jazeera.

“I had a very good maize harvest. I’m expecting several bags of maize, enough to feed my family for the whole year. I will sell the surplus,” said the 43-year-old as he stood beside stacks of harvested maize.

At a stakeholder meeting last month in Mutare, Zimbabwe’s Minister of State for Manicaland Provincial Affairs and Devolution, Misheck Mugadza, announced a tougher stance on illegal settlements.