A Masvingo woman spent a night in police cells with her two-year-old child this week after she objected to fencing being erected across a plot her family has occupied for more than two decades — a confrontation that has thrust a sitting legislator into the centre of a widening peri-urban land dispute.
Nancy Rikitai Gwaindepi, 42, was detained in Masvingo on Monday together with a neighbour. Both were released the following afternoon. The family says the arrest came minutes after she pleaded with a group of men who had arrived at her Clipsham plot and begun putting up a fence spanning four adjoining plots of 1.5 hectares each.
A fence, a police vehicle and a night in the cells
According to Gwaindepi’s account, she told the workers she and her household were about to lose their home. A police vehicle then arrived carrying two female officers and a driver, and she, her baby and the neighbour were taken to the station.
Her husband, Prichard Tafirenyika Masocks, said the detention had left the family reeling. He told reporters that two of his older children had since left home and that the family did not know where they were. The children, aged 16 and 19, should be in school, he said. Masocks, who works as a driver in Shurugwi, said he had to step away from his job to be with his wife and their 11-year-old son.
Gwaindepi described the strain of the past week as overwhelming, saying the harassment had left her depressed and, at times, despairing.
MP says the plot belongs to his brother
Chivi North MP Godfrey Mukungunugwa confirmed that an arrest took place but rejected the family’s version of events. He said the land belongs to his brother, Day Mukungunugwa, who was allocated it by the ministry in September 2025, and described Gwaindepi as an illegal occupant who had been given notice to vacate.
The legislator said the area is now designated for agro-business plots and that his brother had been communicating with what he called illegal settlers. He denied ever visiting the plot himself and asked that the matter not be published, arguing it would damage his reputation.
Provincial police spokesperson Inspector Kudakwashe Dhewa said Gwaindepi’s name did not appear in the force’s records, although the MP acknowledged that she had been arrested — leaving the two accounts at odds.
Hundreds of households on edge
The Clipsham row is not an isolated one. Plot holders say more than 700 people in the area are facing removal, among them war veterans, former police officers and civil servants who have lived there for over 20 years. Families say they hold offer letters issued by the then Minister of Lands, while the incoming occupiers are said to possess fresh allocations from the Ministry of Local Government and Public Works.
Those facing eviction claim they received only verbal notices to leave. They also allege the new allocations include permanent secretaries, ministry directors and employees from the office of Masvingo Minister of State Ezra Chadzamira, and that the process has been conducted largely out of public view.
Moffat Chikozho, 72, a resident since 2002, said the latest developments had left him deeply unsettled. Other plot holders, speaking on condition of anonymity, claimed that ZANU PF figures involved in the takeovers already own multiple farms, including sugarcane holdings in Chiredzi.
Attempts to obtain details from the relevant government departments over the past two years have produced no answers, according to the families involved.
Why Clipsham matters
Clipsham sits in what is widely regarded as Masvingo’s most sought-after peri-urban farming belt, close enough to the city for residential and commercial development while still offering agricultural land. That combination has made it a magnet for competing claims, and residents say police had visited the area twice before this week’s incident, warning that someone with considerable influence intended to take over their plots.
The case now hinges on two sets of paperwork — the older offer letters held by long-standing occupiers and the newer allocations cited by the incoming claimants. Until the competing documents are tested, the families in Clipsham remain in place, bracing for the next knock on the gate.