Back to Index

Chaos in land reform
Tawanda Majoni, Sunday Mirror (Zimbabwe)
July 04, 2004

http://www.africaonline.co.zw/mirror/stage/archive/040704/national22462.html

CHAOS still reigns supreme in the country’s accelerated land redistribution programme, with the latest revelations indicating that the Ministry of Lands, Land Reform and Resettlement is in a quandary over what to do with multiple farm owners.

Concern also prevails over some of the decisions that a presidential committee on resettlement is making. Critics say the decisions are bound to further undermine the speedy decongestion of communal areas, one of the basic guiding tenets of the land reallo cation programme that was adopted in 2000.

The Presidential Land Resettlement Committee, chaired by Minister John Nkomo, who is in charge of the Lands, Land Reform and Resettlement portfolio, has admitted through a report presented to President Robert Mugabe in April, that it is being frustrated by multiple farm owners, some of whom are cabinet ministers, who are not willing to surrender the extra farmland they grabbed.

The Committee was set up immediately after another presidential land review committee led by the former secretary to the President and cabinet, Charles Utete, compiled a report chronicling how land had been allocated under the fast track and A2 programmes and made some recommendations. It had as one of its arms a national inspectorate team whose brief was to identify vacant plots and farms for allocation to people on the waiting list and those who wanted to swap their plots. There was a furore recently when a local daily, The Herald reported that Nkomo’s ministry was seeking to reverse the gains of the land reform programme by giving back land to white farmers who had been dispossessed of their farms to make way for thousands of landless blacks, by allegedly cancelling offer letters.

Nkomo, in what was perceived as an inter-ministerial fallout, hit back, saying the claims were being made by some malcontents who had criminally acquired more than one farm each. The allegations sought to absolve the ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, headed by Joseph Made from the untidiness relating to offer letters.

In February, Nkomo warned those holding on to more than one farm to surrender the rest or face prosecution. Even President Mugabe has in the past raised the whip to the culprits, but this has largely fallen on deaf ears.

Mystery surrounds the demonstrated cheek of the offenders, leaving many wondering why no action is being taken against them.

Observers say their defiance could indicate that they wield a lot of power whose balance higher authorities are reluctant to unsettle, especially now that most attention is trained on the parliamentary elections to be held in March next year.

The Land Resettlement Committee has a legal sub-committee that could be used to find ways of addressing the issue of multiple farm ownership.

Many powerful people, among them cabinet ministers and other top government officials, military and police bigwigs, prominent bankers and business persons reportedly took advantage of the confusion that accompanied the fast track exercise to amass farming plots for themselves, relatives and friends.

In some cases, the culprits drove former peasants from lucrative farms where they had been resettled. This has been cited as one of the major reasons why most intended beneficiaries of the programme, particularly those living on unyielding land in rural areas, remain congested there.

Ironically, there are vast tracts of land that remain idle, with Nkomo apparently undecided over what to do with them, even when preparations for the next main planting season are supposed to be underway.

"There are 1 513 plots, which were established, as vacant. These plots had either not been offered to anyone or had been vacated by the initial beneficiaries," read the Land Resettlement Committee report.

However, Nkomo is insisting that no land shall be allocated to waiting identified beneficiaries until a full audit of available property is made. It is not clear how soon those who need to be resettled will have to wait.

"During the Presidential Land Resettlement Committee’s consultative visits to meet stakeholders in the provinces, all Provincial Land Committees expressed concern with the increasing number of people who owned more than one farm while there continued to be a lot of people still on the waiting lists," observed the Nkomo committee.

There is a total of 129 444 applicants on the waiting list throughout the country, according to the report, but the general perception is that the figure could actually be higher than that, given the inefficiency in the data capturing process. The report says the scenario obtained as a result of a combination of factors, among them the conflict of roles between provincial committees and the lands ministry over the commercial A2 allocations, double allocations emanating from Made’s office and cases of senior government and Zanu PF officials who took more than one farm each.

The report blames Made’s ministry for allocating land to beneficiaries who would not have been recommended by provincial committees, a revelation that points to underhand dealing in the agriculture ministry. "There are also cases of senior Party and Government officials who grabbed more than one farm using their positions of influence. In most cases, these officials would have received only one offer letter. These officials have clandestinely held on to numerous other farms through their relatives," says the committee report.

A total of 1 397 beneficiaries had gone on to settle on farms without offer letters, even though they had been recommended by provincial land committees.

Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.

TOP