Repercussions of 99-year leases
Sunday, 04 March 2012 00:00
Emilia Zindi Agriculture Editor
A senior Government official revealed at a recent parliamentary portfolio committee meeting that all A2 farmers will be required to pay a maximum fee of US$90 000 to get 99-year leases, which would be used as collateral to secure loans from commercial banks.
The announcement by the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Lands and Resettlement, Mrs Sophia Tsvakwi, has been met with mixed reactions from a cross-section of society.
Farmers, farmer unions as well as war veterans believe the new measures will retard strides made in empowering the majority in the agricultural sector.
While most of the concerned parties agree that some form of compensation should be paid by beneficiaries to the Government, it is the fee required to obtain the lease that leaves many wondering whether the authorities did any research before coming up with such a bold pronouncement.
Perhaps a closer look at the period of colonisation, when the white settler regime forced the indigenous people off their fertile land, is critical.
It is an indisputable fact that during that period, indigenous people not only lost their homes but also their livestock.
Houses and valuable property were burnt down in violent confrontations. The so-called district commissioners were at the forefront of enforcing the illegal evictions, making sure the evictees complied within 24 hours.
A case in point is the eviction of the Tangwena people from the Kaerezi area of Nyanga, which, to a great extent, strengthened the resolve by many blacks resident there to take up arms against the white oppressors.
All that and many other heinous acts were committed against the black indigenous people as they were forced off the motherland with no compensation at all paid to those who lost their livestock, household property as well as homes.
In fact, stringent measures, which included unwarranted taxes, were specifically crafted for the black majority to make them suffer more.
Indigenous people were relocated to some poor non-arable areas, which became known as tribal trust lands or reserves where they built homes from scratch with virtually no assistance from those who evicted them.
Some were forcibly moved to the inhospitable and tsetse fly-infested areas such as Gokwe and Muzarabani.
It might sound absurd, but those who studied history will attest to the fact that even women were subjected to rape while their husbands were captured to supply free labour.
As one historian, Arnold Toynbee, stated in his “Study of History” (1947 Vol 1: 152): “Tribal man means a man who is a member of a tribe. Tribe is defined as a group of primitive clans under a recognised chief, inferior people and backward.
“When we, Westerners, call people natives, we implicitly take the cultural colour out of our conception of them. We see them as trees walking or as wild animals infesting the country in which we happen to come across them.
“In fact, we see them as part of the local flora and fauna, and not as man of like passions with ourselves, and seeing them, thus, as something infra human, we feel entitled to treat them as though they did not possess ordinary human rights.
“They are merely natives of the lands they occupy and no term of occupancy can be long enough to confer on them any prescriptive rights.
“Their tenure is as provisional and as precarious as that of the forest trees which the Western pioneer fells, or of the big game which he shoots down.
“And how shall the Lords of creation treat the human game, when in their own good time they come and take possession of the land which by right of eminent domain is their own?
“Shall they treat these natives as vermin to be exterminated or as domesticable animals to be turned into hewers of wood and drawers of water?
“No other alternative needs to be considered if niggers have no souls. All this is implicit in the word ‘native’ as we have come to use it in the English language.’’
Little had the white settlers thought or known that what goes around comes around. They underestimated the late spirit medium, Mbuya Nehanda’s pronouncement when she was captured and hanged alongside Sekuru Kaguvi: “Mapfupa angu achamuka(My bones shall rise).”
To the white settler regime, these words were nothing but a mere threat by the two spirit mediums that were later hanged.
But, indeed, as they predicted, the black people of this country had to wage wars of liberation — the 1893 invasion of the Ndebele First Chimurenga/Imfazwe Gwaai and Shangani reserves; the 1896-97 Shona and Ndebele first Chimurenga/Imfazwe (war of liberation) up to the Second Chimurenga that brought independence in 1980.
The late Zanu chairman, Cde Herbert Chitepo, on a trip to Australia in 1973, said: “I could go into the whole theories of discrimination in legislation, in residency, economic opportunities and education. I could go into that, but I will restrict myself to the question of land because I think this is very basic.
“To us, the essence of white domination is domination over land. That is the real issue.’’
No one doubts that the systematic dispossession realised largely through violence, war and legislation led to the skewed land distribution and ownership pattern that until recently characterised Zimbabwe.
The land has been successfully repossessed and redistributed among its rightful owners, the indigenous people of Zimbabwe. It is, however, sad that certain calls such as this demand by the Government for its people to pay US$90 000 to compensate former oppressors are now being made.
Zimbabwe Farmers’ Union executive director Mr Paul Zakariya said while the union appreciates Government efforts to address the land question by bringing beneficiaries of the land reform programme on board to contribute to the compensation fund, there are challenges associated with this approach.
He said such amounts of money could only be raised by farmers from farming activities over a long period. In order to raise that amount, agriculture should be operating efficiently.
“At present, the sector has a number of challenges that must be addressed by Government, for example electricity generation and payment for produce. The Grain Marketing Board has not been paying farmers from the Zimbabwe dollar era and infrastructure on farms is dilapidated,’’ he said.
He said the US$90 000 was a lot of money for most newly resettled farmers.
He said it would only be fair if Government first gave out bankable leases as this is the prerequisite for farmers to make land productive.
Once farmers started to access suitable agricultural loans, they could become productive and could contribute to the compensation fund using resources from farming activities.
He said in order to decisively deal with the whole question of land and with the mind to restore value to land, a land bank could be created within which a compensation fund would be administered. Donors and well-meaning development partners could help establish the land bank.
Resettled beneficiaries could then borrow from the land bank to finance the 99-year lease, infrastructure development, equipment and working capital.
The land bank, under this arrangement, could accept the 99-year leases as security for farmers’ borrowings with the terms of the borrowings also reasonable.
Mr Zakariya said the Land Acquisition Act transferred ownership from former commercial farmers to the Government. This, he said, automatically meant that Government, as the acquiring authority, held title to the land.
“This effectively makes all agricultural land State land. The Government is the one that owes the former farmers compensation for developments on the land and not the beneficiaries of the land reform programme,” he said.
“The newly resettled farmers are on the land in terms of the Act and cannot be given the burden to negotiate with former farmers.” He said it is a historical fact that white farmers expropriated land. It is also a fact that the land tenure that the white regime developed on the land was secure. The land value was not lost or locked because of the historical circumstances then.
The land could be transferred for value with banks accepting the land title documents.
“In the present circumstances, land has been given a tag, to say that it is contested land. This has effectively locked the value of land.
“In fact, what was distributed was the physical land and not the value thereof. In terms of empowering the land beneficiaries, more still needs to be done.’’
He said the longer farmers stayed on the land without leases the more the Government lost revenue. He added that as long as there were no rentals accumulating because of keeping the land derelict, no one was going to surrender land to Government and a lot of land would remain idle.
He said Government’s decision should have taken into account input from stakeholders such as farmer unions, farmers, financial institutions, non-governmental institutions and industry.
“How did the Government come up with this figure? Was it scientifically determined, that is, is it based on a per unit area; farm valuation or natural regions?
“All these questions remain unanswered. Our recommendation as a union is for Government to consult widely before announcing such important issues.’’
Freedom fighter and former Mashonaland West War Veterans’ Association chairman (Chegutu district) Cde Edmore Matanhike said it was questionable how the Government arrived at the figure, adding that it was unfair for new farmers to be asked to pay compensation to former oppressors.
Another freedom fighter, Cde Elijah Jabangwe, said the structures on the farms had depreciated as they were built more than 70 years ago, making the compensation figures announced by the Government, high.
Most of them had cracks with resettled farmers having their own plans to demolish and rebuild the houses using standard bricks and not farm bricks used by former commercial farmers.