Land tenure audit now without delay
http://www.theindependent.co.zw/
Thursday, 04 August 2011 18:13
IT was a bit of a relief to hear the Reserve Bank governor admitting in his
monetary statement last week that the land reform programme was a failure,
not so much because of anything else but because of the ineptitude of those
who were allocated the land.
Gono insists that those beneficiaries should not take their failures
elsewhere. Unless he was grandstanding as Kasukuwere accused him of doing
last year, the governor needs to be applauded for facing up to the truth. It
takes a lot for one to admit where they have failed or made mistakes. Once
you have admitted your mistake, you open up the opportunity to rectify it
and perhaps move on positively. Okay, so now the land reform was, as we have
always known, chaotic.
What next?
Given that the global political agreement acknowledges that the land reform
programme is irreversible, and I quote article 5.5 of the GPA which states:
“Accepting the irreversibility of the said land acquisitions and
redistribution,” we now need to move to the next stage, making the land
productive.
Again, we are not saying something out of the blue. Article 5.9 (f) of the
same agreement states that the parties should “work together for the
restoration of full productivity on all agricultural land”. But this cannot
be done until a semblance of order is brought to the current land tenure
system.
We are aware that there is multiple farm ownership and these multiple farm
owners are doing sweet nothing on that land. Gono ought to have gone further
and reminded the players in the GPA that a land audit ought to be conducted
so that multiple farm owners be dispossessed of the extra farms and these be
allocated to others, preferably those who are more deserving, including the
former white farmers, yes the former white farmers!
The point is the “powers that be” have driven the point home that they have
the power to dispossess one at whim. It is a fact that all governments are,
by nature, dictatorships. Apart from expropriating land, they daily
expropriate our hard earned earnings in the various forms of taxes, which,
if we are lucky they may use for purposes that benefit us.
Otherwise, more often they take this money and use it on arms in the names
of defence and peace. Whose peace? People are generally at peace with each
other, it’s governments that are not and need defence. For the average
Themba, all he needs is a good police force. Japan has no army to talk
about, look how successful it has been and so has Germany.
Now in case you are lost in all this as I am, the point I was driving home
is that our government has demonstrated to the former white farmers that it
wields the ultimate power. It’s time for an armistice where they can get
these farmers back on the land, on the government’s terms. I can somehow
hear Tafataona Mahoso saying we believe only whites can farm.
No sir. We’re saying let’s have those who have experience in commercial
farming come back and work with their far less experienced colleagues. As a
reminder, the GPA requires the current unity government to “conduct a
comprehensive, transparent and non-partisan land audit”, during the tenure
of the Seventh Parliament of Zimbabwe, for the purpose of establishing
accountability and eliminating multiple farm ownerships.
The land tenure audit must be done asap so that we bring back productivity
on the farms
We want the land reform programme to come to a conclusion so that we can
proceed with the much more important agrarian reform.
Candid Comment- Itai Masuku