HARARE, Zimbabwe — “If you want peace, work for justice.”

Those were the famous words uttered by Pope Paul VI in 1972. But a community in Zimbabwe thinks this is not necessarily the case with local Jesuits. In fact, community residents and the Catholic order have engaged in a years-long court battle after the church tried to evict them from their ancestral land on the outskirts of the capital, Harare.

The more than 1,000 families were relieved in mid-June when a high court agreed to halt moves by the Jesuits to evict them from their land that the church wants to turn into an urban residential area. The court, however, ordered that the church consider the objections raised by local communities who are opposed to the urbanization project on the basis that it would “impoverish us and make us destitute.”

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Chishawasha Farm, a 4,000-hectare (9,884-acre) piece of land some 19 miles (30 kilometers) north of Harare, is part of the ancestral lands of the VaShawasha community that was parceled out to the church by a British colonial government more than a century ago, with complete disregard to the welfare of the local Indigenous people. The land was given to the Jesuits as a token of gratitude for their support of the Pioneer Column, a colonial settler force that conquered the country on the behalf of the qeen of England.

Despite the simmering dispute, the church and the community have co-existed for decades, with the villagers enjoying physical occupation of the land, while the church held the title deed. However, in 2013, the church drew up plans to divide the farms and sell the land as urban residential and commercial plots, drawing the ire of the community when it became aware of the plan. This development, residents say, would result in them being pushed off the only land that they have known as home for generations.

From protector to abuser?

Throughout the colonial era, a period that spanned 1890 to 1980, the Jesuits resisted the colonial administration’s efforts to evict the VaShawasha. When Zimbabwe gained its Independence in 1980, the Jesuits resolved to return the land to its rightful owners, only to have a change of heart decades later.

Included in the papers filed in court is a 1985 report by Michael Behr, a development consultant, to the Chishawasha Area Board after he was commissioned by Father David Harold-Barry, then-head of Jesuits in the African country.

In the report, Behr recommended that the Jesuits return this land to its original owners.

“While it will clearly still take some time to be effected, it is difficult to make a case for the transfer of ownership of the land back to its rightful owners to be made dependent on the successful outcomes of the above development program,” the report said. “The people of Chishawasha have a right to the ownership of the land and its return to them should not be conditional. … Now that the question of the squatters is being resolved, there seems little reason as to why the hand-over process cannot be speeded up.”

But the handover process never took place. Instead, as the demand for urban land increased in Harare, the priests got another idea: Turn the farms into 7,000 residential plots averaging about 2,153 square feet (200 square meters) each and sell them off to buyers. In the process, the church would rake in millions of dollars from the real estate deal.

‘We continue living in fear and anxiety’

Since 2019, efforts by the community to engage the Jesuits directly failed as several of their letters to the church and the project managers were largely ignored.

“I refer to my letter of 11 September 2019, seeking audience with you regarding the project,” wrote Herbert Nyamayaro, the head of Nyamayaro village, in a letter penned five years ago to Father Chiedza Chimandah of the Jesuit Province of Zimbabwe and Mozambique. “I humbly request that we meet at your earliest convenience as we continue to live in fear and anxiety due to the uncertainty we face given the physical developments on the ground.”

Protests by villagers fell on deaf ears, resulting in the court challenge.

The community is now seeking an order to stop the evictions that will affect seven villages. Residents are also requesting that the Jesuit provincial superior of Zimbabwe, Father Fidelis Mukonori, transfer the title deeds to them after conducting land surveys.

Over the years, Jesuits, also known as the Society of Jesus, in Zimbabwe have enjoyed the patronage of the late President Robert Mugabe. In fact, Mugabe was very close to Mukonori, the leader of the Jesuits in the country. The priest later became a mediator during the military coup that toppled Mugabe in November 2017. He has since written a book about his role in convincing Mugabe to give up power.

Most of the letters from the VaShawasha community leaders were copied to the Papal Nuncio in Zimbabwe, local Catholic bishops and other stakeholders. The villagers say they are prepared to take their case to Pope Francis because they believe that the latest move by the church is driven by the desire for profit rather than religious in nature. This case, they argue, isn’t even a legal matter but a moral one, especially considering that Zimbabwe’s war of liberation, which the church supported, was meant to correct, among other things, the historical injustices of land ownership.

“We feel that the Jesuits do not care about our people, but are only after making profits from our land,” Nyamayaro pointed out in a 2019 letter to the project consultants. “The issuance of Title Deeds to the Jesuits by the Colonial Administration without our ancestors’ knowledge and consent was fraudulent and a great betrayal to our ancestors who had welcomed the Jesuits who had told our ancestors that they were spreading the Word of God and would build schools and educate their children.”

The government of Zimbabwe has since embarked on a controversial land reform program in which it seized back 25 million acres (10 million hectares) of land from farmers of European descent and gave it to landless Indigenous Blacks, insisting on only compensating the farmers for improvements made to the properties.

Unacceptable offer

One point of dispute is the number of people that are recognized as locals by the Jesuits for the purpose of compensation or inclusion in the urbanization project. 

In 1985, when Behr embarked on the plan, there were 220 families (1,100 people) living on Chishawasha Farm. That was some four decades ago. The number has grown in the ensuing years. But the Jesuits say they only recognize 696 households that were living on the disputed land as of the year 2000. The problem with the cutoff date is that it would give the Jesuits the right to evict hundreds of families without paying them any form of compensation, including those born in the recognized households, local residents argue.

“It’s almost 20 years later, a lot has happened. Children born up to the year 2000 have since grown up and some now have their own families,” community leaders said in an April 2019 letter to project managers.

Another point of dispute is that the planned urbanization project gives the recognized households an option of being allocated residential plots should they wish to continue living in Chishawasha, an offer that the community leaders say is unacceptable. Most of the community members currently rely the land for subsistence farming as well as for grazing their livestock, hence their outcry that the plans by the Jesuits would impoverish them.

“We are of the opinion that 200 square meters is very small and lacks the dignity that we have since become accustomed to,” the letter reads. “It would be very stressful, humiliating and totally unacceptable to find an entire household that used to occupy in excess of five or six acres of land on average, now huddling on a 200 square meter piece of land. How do we explain it to our grandchildren? We should accept a minimum of two hectares for each adult resident.”

A Jesuit spokesman said the idea of urbanizing Chishawasha was first considered in the year 2000, following concerns that some of the problems experienced by unplanned settlements in other parts of the country could occur in Chishawasha.

“Given the huge demand for housing and the fact that there are already residential areas that have been established on the north, south and west of the estate, it was decided to accept the inevitability of the urbanization of the area and work with government to establish a properly planned urban settlement,” according to the religious order.

The land, the Jesuits have argued, was officially zoned as commercial farming land under a government master plan in 2000, but has mainly been used for church institutions, including a school, a seminary and convent, a clinic and a retirement home for nuns.

The Vatican has not commented on the situation.

‘We are not fighting VaShawasha’

Chishawasha Land Project general manager Isaac Chimbetete told reporters last year that no recognized VaShawasha would be evicted from Chishawasha Farm, but only those that moved in after 2000. 

“Contrary to popular belief, the Jesuits are not fighting with VaShawasha, as they are aware of the villagers’ concerns,” Chimbetete said.

He said the Jesuits — an order noted for its educational, missionary and charitable works — now face a morality test of sorts following the court ruling.

“They have always engaged with all stakeholders, including the traditional leadership, the local authority and the VaShawasha living at Chishawasha Farm,” Chimbetete said.

Cyril Zenda is a Christian and an African journalist and writer based in Harare, Zimbabwe.