Mutare, Zimbabwe – New homesteads cling to the slopes of Zimbabwe’s Jap Highlands, a fertile mountain area that has turn into a vacation spot for individuals fleeing drought-stricken elements of the nation.
Many arrived hoping to rebuild their lives on land the place crops can nonetheless develop. Now they concern they could possibly be pressured out as the federal government intensifies a crackdown on unlawful settlements.
Identified formally as “unlawful settlers” and generally derisively as “squatters”, many say they moved right here as a result of more and more erratic rainfall and recurring droughts had made farming tough of their house areas.
Stretching about 320 km from Nyanga to Chipinge district alongside the Zimbabwe-Mozambique border, the Jap Highlands stay one in all Zimbabwe’s most fertile areas.
With dependable rainfall, wealthy soils and an abundance of perennial rivers, the realm has turn into a magnet for hundreds of individuals fleeing more and more harsh weather conditions in Zimbabwe’s dry lowlands.
A harvest of hope
“I got here right here 18 years in the past and have been residing right here ever since. We don’t have anyplace else to go,” Lloyd Gweshengwe, a migrant residing within the Jap Highlands, advised Al Jazeera.
This farming season introduced him hope.
“I had an excellent maize harvest. I’m anticipating a number of luggage of maize, sufficient to feed my household for the entire yr. I’ll promote the excess,” mentioned the 43-year-old as he stood beside stacks of harvested maize.
However that sense of meals safety might not final lengthy.
Authorities tightens enforcement
At a stakeholder assembly final month in Mutare, Zimbabwe’s Minister of State for Manicaland Provincial Affairs and Devolution, Misheck Mugadza, introduced a harder stance on unlawful settlements.
He mentioned he had directed the Zimbabwe Republic Police and the Nationwide Prosecuting Authority to accentuate arrests and prosecutions of conventional leaders, middlemen and authorities officers implicated in illegal land allocations.
“There may be zero tolerance for corruption,” Mugadza advised the assembly. “The Environmental Administration Company should implement Environmental Impression Evaluation necessities and environmental safety legal guidelines in ecologically delicate areas. Wetlands, riverbanks and forests should not on the market. Conventional leaders should function strictly throughout the Conventional Leaders Act and report unlawful actions to the related authorities.”
The federal government says the train is critical to revive order in land administration, curb corruption and defend the setting from degradation attributable to unplanned settlements.
Local weather stress behind migration
On the bottom in Manicaland province, the state of affairs is extra advanced. Many households going through doable eviction say their relocation was not pushed by land hypothesis, however by worsening local weather circumstances which have made farming more and more tough.
Gweshengwe grew up in Village C in Gutaurare, a parched a part of Mutare district that not sustains rain-fed crop farming. Like many others, he finally moved to the wetter Jap Highlands looking for arable land.
“I’m not but certain what the federal government is planning on doing, however we’re begging it to regularise our settlements,” he mentioned. “The demolition workout routines haven’t but began in our space, however we’re listening to within the information what is occurring elsewhere.”
Equally, Simon Chanakira, 44, Gweshengwe’s neighbour, relocated to the Jap Highlands from the drought-prone Chitora space looking for a greater life.
Unbiased researcher Trymore Maganga advised Al Jazeera that unlawful settlements within the Jap Highlands have turn into a coping technique for households affected by local weather change, even when they aren’t a long-term answer.
“These settlements depart long-standing land injustices unaddressed, create authorized insecurity for migrants, improve environmental and hazard dangers, and infrequently generate social tensions,” he mentioned.
Unsure future
Human rights lawyer Blessing Nyamaropa advised Al Jazeera that Zimbabwe lacks a coverage framework particularly addressing climate-induced migration.
“Anybody who occupies land with out following due course of is considered an unlawful occupier,” he mentioned. “Usually, individuals method conventional leaders, pay one thing and are allotted land. Conventional leaders shouldn’t have that authority.”
He mentioned some migrants have settled on industrial farms with out official permission from the Ministry of Lands.
![Lloyd Gweshengwe, a climate migrant in Zimbabwe's Eastern Highlands [Andrew Mambondiyani/Al Jazeera]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Lloyd-Gweshengwe-a-climate-migrant-in-Zimbabwes-Eastern-Highlands-Photo-by-Andrew-Mambondiyani-1-1781180976.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513&quality=80)
“It’s unlawful to occupy state land and not using a allow, lease or supply letter. The federal government has been invoking the legislation to have such individuals arrested and evicted from that land,” he mentioned.
Regardless of the authorized framework, Nyamaropa mentioned enforcement alone can’t resolve the disaster, calling for larger consciousness and structured responses to climate-driven displacement.
“There ought to be an admission by all stakeholders that we have now a problem. These affected ought to method the related authorities departments in order that they are often settled legally,” he mentioned.
For now, Gweshengwe continues tending his fields whereas ready for readability on what comes subsequent.
“We don’t have anyplace else to go,” he mentioned.
