Zimbabwe Officals Grabbed Prime Land Under Reforms

by Wilson Johwa

To date only one politician has publicly surrendered his extra farms to the state, a month after the expiry of a two-week deadline set by President Robert Mugabe.

Mugabe's deadline marked his first response to the damning report by the Presidential Land Review Committee that he appointed in May to assess the success of his government's controversial land reform program.

The report reveals gross irregularities and corruption in the allocation of land since the "fast track" land reform program began in 2000. In addition, it is said to dispute official reports that over 300,000 landless families had been resettled.

Prompted by this report -- and two others before it -- President Mugabe on July 30 gave his party colleagues with multiple farms until Aug. 13 to relinquish the extra properties.

To date only Obert Mpofu, the governor of the Matabeleland North province, declared he was surrendering two state farms he had leased in the productive Nyamandlovu area. He retains a farm he bought before the land reform program began.

However, Mpofu is understood to have recently taken over two hunting concessions, Railways Farm 40 and farm 41 located on the edge of the country's biggest game reserve, the 14,000-hectare Hwange National Park.

In the rest of the country's nine provinces, officials have maintained a deafening silence over surrendering their extra properties.

The chairperson of the ruling ZANU-PF party, John Nkomo, says that 30,000 hectares have been surrendered countrywide by multiple farm owners and that more land was due to be given up.

However, the opposition is unconvinced, insisting that Mugabe's directive has largely been ignored.

Paul Themba Nyathi of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) says that due to the ongoing discussion about Mugabe's departure from office, his underlings view the 79-year-old leader as a lame duck whose days are numbered and hence see no reason why they should do his bidding.

"His power has been whittled down because of the succession debate," Nyathi says. "He has no moral authority because they know what he himself has done (corruptly)."

However, speaking when he officially received the report on Sept. 11, Mugabe promised to act on the recommendations of the Presidential Land Review Committee, a hint that he may sack those of his Cabinet members implicated in the report.

In power for 23 years, Mugabe is seen as the stumbling block to a return to normalcy in Zimbabwe, presently in the throes of a political and economic crisis.

Analysts say his retirement is now unavoidable and will come as soon as he manoeuvres a successor who will protect him against an expected backlash.

Political analyst Lovemore Madhuku says there is no way there can be a return of these farms under the current regime which he claims is tainted by corruption.

He says no politician will return the farms knowing his colleagues are corrupt too, be it in other areas.

"No-one in ZANU-PF has a moral high ground to impose the rules," he says. "Land is merely one area of their massive corruption enterprise." A farm in Zimbabwe is the ultimate prize for a career in politics. Almost the entire leadership in government and within the ruling ZANU-PF party is known to have at least one farm each.

Since May 2000 when the government lost a crucial referendum on a new constitution, it has embarked on a crude and rather populist land reform exercise, shortly before a crucial parliamentary election it was projected to lose.

The reason for the land reform exercise was to correct colonial injustices in land ownership which was one of the main reasons Zimbabweans fought a 15-year-long bush war that culminated in independence in 1980.

However, coming 20 years after independence and with no clear criteria on intended beneficiaries, many of the choice farms have ended up in the hands of government officials, judges and other well-connected individuals.

Some of these new farmers have earnestly tried their hand at their newest calling. But not enough, apparently.

Revelations this month that the Zimbabwe National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ZNSPCA) was prosecuting former Central Bank governor Kombo Moyana following the death of 55 head of cattle at his farm, showed how little value some of Zimbabwe's powerful have attached to the land they got so easily.

The ZNSPCA said the animals, part of a herd of 300, had died a slow death at Moyana's Olympia Farm on the outskirts of the capital Harare because of a shortage of grazing and water.

Moyana is being charged under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act and faces a maximum fine of 20,000 Zimbabwe dollars (about $5 U.S.) or six months imprisonment or both.

The country's land reform exercise has largely been blamed for the fact that agro-exports have plummeted while some 5.5 million Zimbabweans will need food aid by January 2004. A severe outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease has also ensued from the programme, prompting the government to commit additional resources for the importation of vaccines.

But the government still has another task to accomplish. Since banks are unlikely to lend to farmers with no title to land that in the majority of cases is still the subject of litigation, the government has to step in and provide loans or inputs to the newly resettled farmers.

Two months before the rainy season, there is also no seed on the market. That, too, might have to be imported, raising fears that the seed might not be ideally suited for local conditions.

Nyathi says for Mugabe to have urged his party colleagues to hand over their extra farms was proof that the land reform exercise was unplanned and haphazard in the first place.

"What fascinates ZANU-PF on the land issue is the way that whites have been beaten down and demoralized," Nyathi says, referring to the small pool of white landowners, many of whom have been driven off their farms.

The Commercial Farmers Union (CFU), which represents the landowners who controlled about 70 percent of the country's productive land, says over 11 million hectares of land, or 6,400 farms have been gazetted for acquisition in the last three years.

"The danger, we are facing now, is that we have a lot of people being put on the land and someone else holding the title deeds," says an official with the CFU who preferred to remain anonymous.

Many of the evicted farmers are contesting the process which they have deemed illegal. "It's a legal quagmire that has to be sorted out when the country returns to normal," says the CFU official.