‘Overdue’ call for land audit welcomed
24 January 2013
By Alex Bell
The call this week by the MDC-T for an urgent land audit has been welcomed
as a necessary step towards bringing the agricultural sector out of ‘turmoil’.
Morgan Tsvangirai’s party made this urgent call following a ruling by the
High Court on Tuesday that the Ministry of Lands should have a clear,
transparent and accountable land allocation policy. In his judgment, Justice
Bharat Patel slammed the Lands Ministry over its “murkiness” in land
distribution. He then reversed a Ministry decision from 2005 to offer Denby
Farm in Seke to a senior ZANU PF politician who already had another farm
allocated to him in 2001.
“The MDC condemns the continued greed shown by the senior ZANU PF
politicians in acquiring more than one farm and the MDC’s position remains
that there should be a comprehensive, transparent and non-partisan land
audit to weed out multiple farm ownerships and identify underutilised land
as stipulated by the law,” the party said in a statement.
After a decade of chaos that highlighted ZANU PF’s partisan land
redistribution campaign, the country is unable to feed itself and is once
again turning to international donors for food aid. Despite this, land grabs
have continued and most recently Grace Mugabe was reported to have taken
over part of the lucrative Mazoe Estates in Mazowe. The First Lady already
owns multiple properties as a result of the land grab.
The MDC-T said in its statement that it is “important for the inclusive
government, to carry out a land audit in line with the Global Political
Agreement (GPA) in order to reassert agriculture on the pole position as the
country’s economic mainstay.”
Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) President Charles Taffs told SW Radio Africa
that the call is ‘overdue’ but welcome.
“A land audit was part of the agreement that formed that government of
national unity and four years down the line we still haven’t had a land
audit. In fact the European Union has offered to finance one. So the fact
that one hasn’t taken place confirms our suspicions that they (the
government) actually don’t want it because it is indeed chaotic and unfair
and biased,” Taffs said.
He urged the MDC-T to ensure their call results in action, saying Zimbabwe
“desperately” needs a proper audit to start the recovery process that will
help the agriculture sector grow.
“However there is great resistance because if it was done properly it would
expose the multiple ownership of land distribution which would emphasise how
unfair and unjust the whole system has been,” Taffs said.
He added: “Agriculture is in turmoil and we need to fix it. The current
status quo cannot continue because it is holding the country to ransom.”