Melinda Kusemachibi
Chiredzi Town Council is yet to acquire the land donated to them by then Hippo Valley Estates some years back as they failed to legalise the take-over by acquiring title deeds before the coming in of Tongaat Hulett at the estate.
Town council planner Consider Kubiku said that 925ha of land was donated long back but the local authority was just reluctant to legalise the take-over.
“The initiative made by the department of physical planning together with Chiredzi Town Council after some serious negotiations. Hippo Valley donated 925ha of land to Chiredzi council,” said Kubiku.
He went on to say that the biggest problem they are currently facing is transferring that property from Hippo Valley to council.
“Now the issue is transferring that property from Hippo Valley taking out from the parent deed of Hippo Valley to Chiredzi Town Council. We made initiative since the land was donated but there was dragging of feet because they (Tongaat Hulett) were saying that we need a board resolution from Hippo Valley and their Head Office is in Durban,” said Kubiku.
However, he said that change of management have caused the slowness of property transferring.
“Then it will happen that there was change of management at Hippo Valley as it is now Tongaat Huletts and there are new guys who said they did not even know how it happened.
“We provided them with the donation papers, but now there is need for a meeting between the executive of Tongaat Hulett, Chiredzi Town Council and the lawyers who we engaged to be involved in the transferring of 925ha from Hippo Valley to Chiredzi council,” said Kubiku.
He also said that they made efforts to push for a meeting but nothing materialized.
“We have made efforts since last year to have that meeting but it has not materialized yet. We are still pushing so that we can shed the light to the new guys who are in the executive, the range of things which happened leading to the donation of land,” he said.
Kubiku said they will give the title deeds to beneficiaries; that is if they manage to acquire the tittle deeds from Tongaat Hulett.
“If the new management understand it, then we are going to engage lawyers to transfer that 925 ha to CTC through a deed of donation. If we get a deed of donation from Hippo Valley, it means all those pockets of land we developed the low density area, phase 1 and 2, West hood, Joina City Mukondo high density area, CTC will be in an apposition to give beneficiaries their title deeds,” said Kubiku.
The town planner also said Chiredzi town was being planned and subdivided by a company called Chiredzi Township (Pvt) Ltd then a subsidiary of Hippo Valley.
“Chiredzi Town Council is said to have been responsible for all the initial sub divisions which was done in the early years of creation of Chiredzi town council; so by time Chiredzi was declared a town, it was given a boundary.
“The issue now is all the undeveloped land which was within town and outside the town belonged to Hippo Valley through the subsidiary called Chiredzi Township (Pvt) Ltd except an area which was declared a local government called Tshovani Township.
Contacted for comment, Tongaat Hulett Public Relations Officer Emily Sibanda told this publication to send questions via email and the email was yet to be responded to by the time of publication.
Chiredzi was declared a town in 2009 and it was created by Hippo Valley Estates which is now known as Tongaat Hulett.
It was created as a dormitory town for workers working in Hippo Valley for the sake of providing accommodation and basically administration services like commercial institutions, schools and supermarkets and government services departments.
