Repossessed land up for foreign investment
Financial Gazette
12/3/2020
Tabitha Mutenga Managing Editor
JUSTICE minister Ziyambi Ziyambi says the government is repossessing land from multiple farm owners for re-distribution as well as possible investment activities.
This was after government had recently confirmed that Belarus was interested in investing in crop and livestock production, agro-processing, input supply and local manufacturing of farm mechanisation and irrigation equipment in Zimbabwe.
“Government indeed embarked on a land audit and our President (Emmerson Mnangagwa) is very clear that our policy is one-man, one-farm or one-woman, one-farm. I happen to be the vice-chairman of the lands committee in Mashonaland West… and will testify that we are repossessing farms from multiple farm owners,” Ziyambi told Parliament last week.
In 2019, Mnangagwa set up a commission to probe the issue of land in the country and was presented with a report by Justice Tendai Uchena, which revealed that government lost more than $3 billion in potential revenue to land barons.
The audit was also conducted with the view to downsize large farms, improve production on underutilised farms and curb multiple farm ownership.
Government has streamlined the sizes of all farms in the country’s five ecological regions, in a move that will see more people having access to land.
“The reasons why we are downsizing is to ensure that the majority of Zimbabweans who want agricultural land get it. The land will be given to those on the waiting list who have applied and we will also reserve some for some of the investment that we want to undertake,” Ziyambi added.
The reduction in farm sizes is also expected to boost land capacity utilisation following concerns that some farms were unnecessarily big and underutilised.
According to the new government policy, farms in natural region one will not exceed 250 hectares, while those in natural region two, three, four and five will not exceed 500 hectares, 700 hectares, 1000 hectares and 2 000 hectares respectively.
Analysts contend that the erosion of property rights and land reform programme has resulted in limited or no investment in agriculture, which is key to the growth of Zimbabwe’s economy.