Zimbabwe Democracy Now

Why Zanu-PF fears a Land Audit

Posted by ZDN on October 19, 2009

Minister of Lands and Land Resettlement, Herbert Murerwa is under orders to block any possible implementation of an independent land audit in Zimbabwe. Why?

Because Zanu-PF and its geriatric leader Robert Mugabe are very aware that such an audit would reveal their own greed and venality, along with the complete chaos and anarchy within its own 29-year-old Land Reform Programme.

Their claims to the people that the party is engaged in land redistribution to benefit the masses, would be proved entirely false. The hypocrisy of their land resettlement plan would be exposed.

While Mugabe and his wife are known to have seized at least 12 large commercial farms for themselves, a confidential internal land audit in 2002 revealed many ZPF insiders with more than 2 farms each, in direct violation of Zanu-PF’s own One-Person-One-Farm policy – as well as their Maximum Farm Size Regulations. Minutes leaked from a meeting of Zanu-PF’s 2002 Land Committee listed just a few individuals as follows:

NB The list is not exhaustive as the people interviewed were scared to reveal any information least they might be victimised by the multiple farm owners who seem to have their loyalists within the various land committees.

It is very important to take urgent corrective measures particularly where the leadership is the perpetrator of anomalies as the general public is restive where such cases exist and a multitude of people are still on the waiting list.

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Worse, the minutes also reveal the extent of anarchy, confusion, greed and lawlessness among ZPF heavyweights and petty officials alike, as an ugly free-for-all ensued – the result of the culture of impunity and political patronage encouraged by Mugabe himself in his heedless eagerness to entrench himself as cock of the heap.

In many instances, Zanu-PF heavyweights grabbed land and farms that had already been acquired and resettled, and violently evicted the new tenants.

The chaos and grabbing have escalated considerably since 2003. All of it is sheer looting, since none of the fallow state land or vacant arable land available has ever been even considered for development as commercial farm land for the plaintive ‘landless blacks’. Evidently, virgin bush, no matter how ancestral, is never as ancestral as a nicely developed going concern with buildings, machinery, dams, livestock, fences and roads.

The requirement for an independent land audit formed part of the SADC-sponsored 2008 Global Political Agreement for power sharing signed by the major political parties in Zimbabwe.

In addition the land audit requirement was endorsed again and set as one of the major targets at a ministerial retreat at Victoria Falls in August 2009. The retreat resolved to appoint an independent land committee to drive the land audit, made up of permanent secretaries and senior government officials from all relevant ministries.

No sooner was the ink dry on this resolution, then minister Murerwa fatuously announced that such an audit could not be implemented, as it would cost too much and the government had no money. He picked a number (any number?) and announced that an independent audit would cost US$31 million and take nine months.

Undaunted, The European Union has called his bluff and offered to fund the independent land audit in Zimbabwe, using satellite technology and experienced surveyors as well as conventional means.

Watch this space as Murerwa will undoubtedly invent more and more hysterical arguments as to why such an audit will be impossible.

Comments

• 

  10-21-2009
  9:37 am

  Reply

  Mike

  If Zimbabwe is ever to get out of the tragic mess that it has been allowed to fall into; then the Farms must be returned to Zimbabwean farmers who know what they are doing and will help pull the Country out of its predicament.

  
  

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• Why Zanu-PF fears a Land Audi | zimbabwemetro.com 10-19-2009 at 7:12 pm

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