Zimbabwe 'Land Policy to Identify Multiple Farm Ownership'

17 October 2024

The Herald (Harare)

By Conrad Mupesa, Mashonaland West Bureau

The new land tenure policy is set to expose multiple farm ownership and identify idle land that will then benefit more than 250 000 people on the Government waiting list, Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ziyambi Ziyambi has said.

Government last week announced that beneficiaries of land reform will now receive bankable, registrable, and transferable tenure for their land.

This marks a historic shift towards a secure tenure as farmers will now get enhanced security of tenure to the land to unlock value.

The post-2000 land reform was carried out to divest ownership of agricultural land from the minority white farmers to the black majority people of Zimbabwe and so address social and economic imbalances that existed during the colonial era and to ensure that every Zimbabwean had equitable access to this finite resource.

To further transform the programme and move away from the original reform process, an indefinite moratorium on the issue of any new 99-year leases, offer letters and permits for agricultural land was announced last week.

In an interview, Minister Ziyambi said Zimbabwe's land was, according to experts, a dead asset whose economic value was not fully exploited.

The new policy on agricultural land measures would have a huge impact on Zimbabwe's economic growth and was expected to unlock the full value of the land.

It was also expected to ensure more people would be allocated farmland in an impending land redistribution after the completion of the survey and subsequent issuance of bankable, registrable and transferable tenure certificates.

Minister Ziyambi said the policy would help expose those with multiple farms, idle land and underused farms.

"This will also deal with the issue of one person owning more than one farm and through an audit and title survey will also help to unveil some idle land.

"People should be happy that it will now be easy to find where there is a vacant piece of land. This is a new system on land allocation with no window for corrupt allocations. Those who had multiple farms are set to lose the other ones," he said.

"The President proclaimed a new land tenure policy which is a game changer as it now puts value on the land owned by an indigenous person who benefited from the land. Before this, the land we had was just a dead asset as no value could be affixed to it since the person who was using the land had no exclusive rights to the land and could not approach banks to get financial assistance for his operations, which this policy is correcting," he said.

The new land tenure policy would also protect beneficiaries of land reform from dispossession.

There were a few cases where some vulnerable groups were dispossessed of their farms by land barons, but these would be redressed.

"We had instances where officials from the Agriculture Ministry would withdraw offer letters of some of the land owners and corruptly allocate the land to others in the guise of land replanning. This policy will put to end corrupt tendencies which were being done by corrupt land officers and through some Ministry offices."

Minister Ziyambi also dispelled claims by some "misguided individuals" that suggested the land reform was reversible.

"This move aims to stamp further that land reform is irreversible. But let me also hasten to say that surveying the land will address challenges that were arising from the system we were using before. Land officers and some officials in the offices of Ministers of State were making a killing distributing land, even that of war veterans."

A technical committee, the Land Tenure Implementation Committee, which would co-ordinate and steer the implementation of this process, is going to be set up to work diligently in developing improved security of tenure for land beneficiaries while ensuring that the value of agricultural and urban State land was fully unlocked to guarantee inclusive and nationwide economic development.

The new measures were aimed at addressing challenges Zimbabwean farmers faced, including access to financing, the absence of security of tenure and threats to land tenure.

Addressing journalists during a post-Cabinet briefing last Tuesday, Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services Minister, Dr Jenfan Muswere said the policy will facilitate accelerated investments in agriculture and associated value chains, which include irrigation, dam construction, power supply, and rural road construction.

"The economic value enhancement on land will further unlock resources for the fulfilment of Constitutional obligations related to land reform.

"All these measures will complement current efforts towards an upper middle-income economy, which will be achieved by 2030," Dr Muswere said.

Read the original article on The Herald.