Killarney, Zimbabwe

Killarney is a suburb of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. It is named after the town of Killarney in Co. Kerry in southwest Ireland. It includes a squatted informal settlement also called Killarney.

Garden in Killarney with cement works just visible over gate

Informal settlement

The Killarney squatted informal settlement had 700 inhabitants in 1981 and 2,000 the following year. At its peak it had 4,000. It is composed of three camps: Xotsha, Tshaka and Two Stamp.[1]

During Operation Murambatsvina (Operation Drive Out Filth) in 2005, police wielding iron bars evicted the camps and razed them to the ground.[2] The squatters who had been forcibly evicted from their homes then returned to their shacks and started rebuilding them.[3]

In 2021, squatters said that they had lost their means of income due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Zimbabwe.[4] They also complained that they only had running water from one tap and sometimes it ran green.[5]

References
  1. Mpofu, Busani (2012). "Perpetual 'Outcasts'? Squatters in peri-urban Bulawayo, Zimbabwe" (PDF). Afrika Focus. 25 (2): 45–63. doi:10.1163/2031356X-02502005.
  2. Wines, Michael (13 November 2005). "In Zimbabwe, Homeless Belie Leader's Claim". The New York Times. Retrieved 20 April 2021.
  3. "Zimbabwe: Mugabe's clean-up victims flock back to squatter camps – Zimbabwe". Zim Online. 21 September 2005. Retrieved 17 March 2021.
  4. "Locked down at a squatter camp". The Chronicle. 1 February 2021. Retrieved 20 April 2021.
  5. "Byo slum dwellers survive on sewer water". News Day Zimbabwe. 8 January 2021. Retrieved 20 April 2021.

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