By HICKS SIKAZWE –
ON a visit to Monze in Southern Province last December, I was struck by an array of newly constructed houses built just a metre away from the railway track.
Elsewhere on the Copperbelt in Kitwe grief-stricken families were wailing after a council bull dozer had just pulled down houses which the local authority said had been erected on someone’s land.
What I was not aware of, while admiring the Monze buildings, was that they were also on a demolition list as Zambia Railways had contended to the developers that the units were sited too near the track and posed a safety hazard.
The above examples and a lot more are some of challenges that have emerged alongside the country’s housing construction boom, that need to be managed. The Southern and Copperbelt illustrations may appear negative but what is true is that, since the countrywide sale of council houses heralded in 1996, there has been what one may term a housing revolution never witnessed since independence.
 In Ndola where I have lived since the 1970s what now hosts the sprawling   Mitengo along the Ndola Mufulira road, was a frightening bush. Chifubu residents will tell you that the new high cost residential location, a few years back, was a no go area as people who cultivated there were constant victims of muggings and killings. It also doubled as a hiding place for fleeing armed robbers.
Elsewhere in the city new houses have covered the area between Kalewa garrison and Pamodzi site and service, bearing new residential areas such as Pamodzi overspill, Kansenshi extension (opposite the prisons), and villa. Yet around 1978 up to early nineties’, one risked a beating if they took a short cut from Pamodzi to Nkwazi (commonly known as Sinia) township just at the fall of darkness.
Nkwazi itself has now been wrapped up by houses constructed in open spaces which were between Pamodzi and Kawama. The building trail has continued all the way to Chipulukusu and Misundu, in the past another den of crime. A new area called Northrise extension has sprouted from the stretch behind Arthur Davison Children’s hospital right down to the railway line which was boundary between Nkwazi on one side, Misundu and Chipuluku on the other.
Kawama cemetery is slowly being chiselled by surging structures from all directions. The Chifubu police housing scheme has continued to spread reaching Kawama Township on one side and on the other up to the cemetery.
In the olden days, the mention of Twapia would be followed by shivers up one’s spine. Visit there today; the township and areas around it have been turned around. When you push further to reach Lubuto, Mushili  Kaloko even Kantolomba townships new structures keep ‘getting born’ relentlessly.
On the other side of the city, the vast area which housed the once famous Dag Hammarskjöld stadium now boasts of houses adjoining Itawa residential area moving towards Ndola Lime and Lafarge plants a stretch of more than a kilometre. More units have come up wrapping again around the Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe airport all the way to Ndeke Township.
The story is similar in Luanshya a town whose picture, after the demise of one of the mines there has been painted as wallowing in neglect and poverty, the district is also host to Zambia’s housing construction surge.  Old townships such as Ndeke, Mikomfwa, Roan and Mpatamato no longer look the same as they have under gone some form of “surgical” reform.
In  Chililabombwe  where I did part of my primary school up to the first term of 1968, houses have emerged swamping every space including what used to be play spaces, anthills and fields for growing maize, groundnuts or sweet potatoes.
Large bushy areas such as between a shanty township then called PP (whatever the letters stood for) and another    low cost compound simply referred to as T section, have been taken up by housing construction.
The stretchy patch between the police station in Kamenza moving along the road towards Konkola Township near Kasumbalesa is all strewn with homes. In Chingola  where  I moved to continue my primary education and complete my secondary school, I can hardly recall open play grounds in several townships we  lived in because they are now littered with  new homes. In some cases even what used to be football pitches and parks have fallen to the housing development surge.
“Can you identify some of the key structures in areas where you either lived or played with you friends,” asked a colleague still resident in the mining town.
Some townships such as Kapisha, Twatasha and others around the mining town which were havens for shifty structures seem to have undergone self-transformation as new homes have sprung up. I recall the area between the civic centre, going towards Kabundi south was all trees, grass and shrub there was nothing at that spot which now houses one of the Protea hotels, Zesco offices  and those buildings spread all over.
When entering Mufulira from Ndola, though driving on a heavily potholed road, you will be greeted by new and beautiful housing units that have emerged right into the heart of the mining town.
In Kitwe where I worked as reporter from 1987 to 1990, I plucked running stories on conflicts between the council and settlers of St Anthony, Mulenga, Zamtan or Kapoto shanty townships, the picture after  more than  20 years later has changed as well.
Just that area between Wusikili police station and Mulenga Township, moving parallel with the Ndola Kitwe road has seen homes shooting up and merging with those in Ndeke Township across the stream.
Move on from the Copperblet to the North Western provincial capital of Solwezi, the town has seen a major facelift since the 1970s when I did the second part of compulsory national service at Katandano. New and beautiful structures have shot up along with a vibrant mining industry that has spread to Lumwana, a virgin town several kilometres away from Solwezi.
The above is but, the picturesque example of what has become of the rest of Zambia, a country that has seen a surge not only in the domestic housing construction but other social and business infrastructure as well.
But as the country applauds the housing construction bonanza there are serious and inherent problems that have come up with the boom, that if not well managed all what has been achieved will be wasted effort, time and resources.
One of them is that it is strange that councils countrywide continue to bring down completed houses some of them occupied. One would wonder what has become of the inspectorates in the local authorities.
Why do the councils allow structures to be completed without intervening in the initial stages? Why do they wait to realise that the plot was either illegally allocated or the house was built on someone’s plot long after people scrapping resources to put together a roof under them have completed?
As if that is not enough, the system of allocating plots is to say the list mucky and not transparent and transactions continue being conducted under tables.