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Yet another land audit
Kumbirai Mafunda, The Financial Gazette
November 15, 2006

http://www.fingaz.co.zw/story.aspx?stid=1949

PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe's government, under intense pressure to lend credibility to its anti-corruption drive, says an audit into the take-up and utilisation of land under its controversial land reform programme will be completed by the end of this month.

In 2004 the government admitted that only 44 percent of the land allocated under the controversial agrarian reforms was under productive use.

State Security, Lands, Land Reform and Resettlement Minister Didymus Mutasa told The Financial Gazette this week that the audit, which was embarked on just after his appointment in 2005, had already been completed in Manicaland, Mashonaland West, Matabeleland North, Mashonaland East and the Midlands.

"We are looking at the take-up of A2 farms, their utilisation and where there are disputes on boundaries. Plot take-up under the A2 model is between 80 and 89 percent . . . The audit has identified men and women who are productive," said Mutasa.

His ministry expected to have concluded the audit by the end of this month.

"We will compile it into one report that we will publish as soon as the government gives us the go-ahead," said Mutasa.

He said with effect from January next year, the ministry would conduct a similar audit on the take-up of land under the A1 farming model. The plot take-up under this model is over 90 percent.

"We will proceed to issue permits to bona fide A1 farmers," said Mutasa.

The latest audit is one of many similar verification exercises President Robert Mugabe has ordered since 2000. In 2003, the minister responsible for land reform and resettlement Flora Buka, headed another land audit team. The government never made her report public but the document, which was leaked to the local and international media, contained disturbing revelations.

A follow-up land audit by a commission led by Charles Utete, a former secretary to the president and cabinet, exposed the existence of "swathes of productive land lying idle".

During his tenure as Special Affairs, Lands, Land Reform and Resettlement Minister John Nkomo, who is now the Speaker of Parliament and the ruling party's national chairman, also headed a presidential inquiry into serious irregularities pertaining to land reform.

Although the government intended to resettle more than a million people on not less than 11 million hectares between July 2000 and December 2001, it has only gazetted 6 517 farms measuring over 10 million hectares when President Mugabe gave the nod to the land grab exercise. Since then, 140 698 A1 farmers have been resettled on 2 740 farms while 14 856 large-scale farmers have been resettled on 2 280 farms.

Critics are sceptical that the contents of this latest and eagerly-awaited audit will see the light of day in view of the numerous earlier audit reports that have gathered dust in government offices.

Reports say the land reform programme is riddled with double allocations as both the Agriculture Ministry headed by Joseph Made and Mutasa's ministry do not have a computerised data base on land parcelled out to beneficiaries.

Critics allege that a majority of party 'chefs' used proxies when registering acquired land and properties.

Despite the conducting of successive land audits, the identities of multiple farm owners, whom President Mugabe has on several occasions ordered to surrender the properties for redistribution to veterans of the liberation struggle and landless peasants most of whom bore the brunt of the liberation war, have never been made public.

Some observers say the government's inertia over the issue could suggest that the main culprits who have violated the government's one-man-one-farm policy are powerful politicians.

The accelerated land redistribution programme, which was meant to reverse the legacy of a century of colonial land ownership imbalances, has plunged the country into a food crisis which has only been eased by the intervention of the World Food Programme (WFP) and other humanitarian organisations.

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