Sources in the City of Harare said city fathers spent the whole of Tuesday trying to persuade the group of 40 war veterans and disgruntled members of the ZNA to move out of the three blocks of flats so that construction work could continue.
But they stuck to their guns, telling them; We have fought much bigger wars than this and we will not be defeated on this one. Tell (Gideon) Gono to give us foreign currency first to pay for our rentals before we leave, the sources said.
Most landlords in Harare now demand rentals in hard currency and last year Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) Governor Gono authorised a number of shops in the country to sell basic commodities in foreign currency, dealing a body blow to the majority of citizens who do not have access to foreign currency.
There were fears that the group's continued stay at the flats could result in an outbreak of disease because construction is incomplete while other sources said the invaders had occupied flats that had already been sold.
Construction of the flats – funded by the Infrastructure Development Bank of Zimbabwe (IDBZ) and the City of Harare – started in 2008 and was expected to be completed by December 2009.
The impasse is understood to have resulted in the decision by both the City of Harare and IDBZ chief executive officer Charles Chikaura to seek an audience with Acting Minister of Finance Patrick Chinamasa and the commander of the ZNA Constantine Chiwenga who instructed the military police to move in.
A ZimOnline reporter yesterday witnessed a convoy of armed military police moving into the complex and calling for a meeting with the invaders at which they instructed them to leave.
Both Chikaura and Chinamasa could not be reached for comment yesterday but police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena confirmed the impasse saying; It was not an occupation as such, it was just a group of people who had camped there but they have been dispersed.
Harare Mayor Muchadeyi Masunda said; They have been removed by the military police.
Zimbabwe's soldiers – who this month received salaries of about Z$30 trillion (US$10 on the black market), enough to buy 10 loaves of bread – have in recent months become restive and violent.
Last week 15 armed soldiers looted a shop belonging to opposition Movement for democratic Change (MDC) party legislator Amos Chibaya in Masvingo province and got away with goods valued at over R6 500, saying they were hungry.
Two weeks ago unidentified soldiers raided Gono's farm in Norton and forcibly took 175 chickens valued at US$787.50. Chinhoyi police records show that six armed soldiers driving a white Chinese-made truck arrived at Gono's New Donnington Farm and asked farm manager Philip Musvuuri to load all the chickens at gunpoint.
The soldiers are said to have told the manager that they would not pay for the chickens because Gono owed them money.
Last month some soldiers looted clothes and cash in Harare after the RBZ failed to provide adequate cash in the banks for them to access their salaries and were only stopped after the army and police launched joint patrols in the city.
Soldiers, civil servants and other workers in the country are demanding that they be paid salaries in foreign currency.
Crisis-torn Zimbabwe, which has the highest inflation rate in the world at 231 million percent, has been beset by cash shortages, prompting the central bank to print higher denomination notes, the latest of which is a Z$100 trillion note.
Hyperinflation is the most visible sign of a severe economic crisis blamed on President Robert Mugabe’s policies and seen in shortages of food and every essential commodity.
However, through all this, the army and veterans of Zimbabwe's independence war have been the most loyal to Mugabe, always ready to use brutal tactics to keep public discontent in check in the face of an economic and humanitarian crisis that in recent days has also manifested itself through outbreaks of killer diseases such as cholera and anthrax.
Analysts rule out the possibility of well-paid top army generals staging a coup against Mugabe but they have always speculated that worsening hunger could at some point force the underpaid ordinary trooper to either openly revolt or to simply refuse to defend the government should Zimbabweans rise up in a civil rebellion. – ZimOnline