The Sunday Mail
In his inauguration speech on November 24, 2017, President Emmerson Mnangagwa outlined his vision for a favourable investment environment and inclusive engagement. At the centre of Zimbabwe-West relations in the last 17 years has been land reform. The Sunday Mail’s Chief Reporter Kuda Bwititi spoke to Mr Charles Tuffs, former president of the Commercial Farmers’ Union, on land reform under the new dispensation.
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Q: What do you make of President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s policy of inclusivity?
A: The speech was extremely welcome. It was very positive. I agree with most of the sentiments and believe that the President has a real opportunity to put Zimbabwe on a trajectory of growth where the whole country and all its citizens — regardless of race, colour and creed — can participate in the expansion of the country. This is what is exciting to me.
Q: What do you, as former commercial farmers, have to offer in this new dispensation?
A: I am a professional agriculturist. What I would like to say to the President, given that he is a pragmatist, is that let’s deal effectively and once and for all with the elephant in the room, which is the land issue.
We know that in recent years, there were lots of anomalies with land allocation.
It is extremely encouraging to hear from the Lands, Agriculture and Rural Resettlement Minister (Retired Air Marshal Perrance Shiri) that he is going to deal with illegal settlers.
Let’s deal with the issue of title deeds and respecting property rights so that we open the country for business.
We need to work together with Government to put agriculture on track, creating real forex for industry. You should remember that the immense potential that Zimbabwe has in agriculture is unbelievable.
Prior to 2000, 47 percent of all raw products into industry came from agriculture. Not only that; 60 percent of the market for industrial products was the farming sector.
So, what we need to do is get back to a situation where for every job we create directly in farming, we create seven to 10 jobs in industry.
Let’s focus on getting the industry and manufacturing sector up through agriculture production.
Government needs to send a message that it’s open to business, that it respects property rights. I am so glad that they have done that in just the couple of weeks that they have been in office.
Let’s now work together as Zimbabweans so that we move the country forward. What we should understand is that by Southern African standards, Zimbabwe is a developed country.
We have good infrastructure, towns, railway lines. However, internally, there is very little debt because the mortgage market was almost wiped out by hyperinflation. So, people own houses and don’t owe money against those houses like it is in other countries.
Therefore, let’s get the message to the international market that we respect property rights: Bring in the money, create the mortgage market, capacitate banks, allow everyone to purchase those houses and the loans will stimulate the value of money and accelerate money without having to build anything.
For example, if you have a house, you should be able to go to a bank and get a 25-year loan for that house while investing in agriculture business.
There are so many houses in Zimbabwe that are being built. And if we put all these houses together, we are talking of billions of dollars.
That’s what I am saying, and I am excited about such prospects.
Q: What critical issues, in your view, need to be resolved?
A: As a minority group, what we want as white persons in this country is not to be viewed as second-class citizens or as the other citizens. The issue of being black or white should not really come up. We want to be treated as Zimbabweans. That is the main issue.
I want us to be all treated the same. The racial issue should never come up because we are all equal and the same. We need to repair Zimbabwe through this message of inclusivity so that people can understand that we are all equal and as the white community, we want to work to build Zimbabwe.
Q: What’s your position on compensation?
A: What needs to be done is sit with Government and work out values of what needs to be done, acquired and paid. We are working with Government.
The compensation issue must be turned into a positive.
It must be the key to recovery. We don’t want compensation to be an albatross around our necks. We actually want the issue to be a key to our recovery. We want that money which is paid as compensation to be reinvested into this country.
So, it’s a multi-faceted programme.
Simultaneous to that, we need to put the land on the market. Once we have dealt with compensation, we will know that conflict is gone and that land is free to go on the market – whether through a lease or to be sold.
We can capacitate the land market and the land bank by giving long-term funding to anybody who wants to purchase land or whatever tenure they want to use.
The person who has been allocated land can say that I want to purchase the land, then you can go to the bank and the bank says there is a 25-year loan with concessionary interests.
We want to put the whole land question on an economic platform rather than on a political one. The land that we are talking about is 7,2 million hectares.
The land mass of this country is 39 million hectares.
So, at the moment, the 7 million hectares in question here has held the 39 million hectares to ransom for 17 years because no land has been able to lever its value.
What we need to do is to work together with Government and create a tenure system, encompassing all land in this country. Land is the biggest asset in this country and can be used to mobilise money.
Even the person with one hectare must be able to use that value to lever on that land to improve his/her life. This is how you move from subsistence to commercial.
The Rukuni Commission has a brilliant document that was commissioned around 1994. The commission came up with multiple tenure systems across the country and I think we really need to relook that through the Land Commission and come up with tenure systems that are suitable for all types of Zimbabwean citizens.
Q: What role should Britain play in land compensation?
A: Zimbabwe and Britain have a history that goes back more than 120 years. This history was premised on the land subject. It is imperative that Britain and the British government take a leading role in dealing with this issue on land.
I would really urge the British government to work closely with the Zimbabwe Government to come up with a strategy that deals with the land question once and for all.
From the messages that I’m getting from the British, there are encouraging signs. The message that our President has sent is encouraging, but Britain really needs to take a leading role as the colonial power.
For example, once there is an agreement in place between the Government and farmers, Britain should set up a land donor conference.
Q: Land donor conference . . . ?
A: If an agreement is made that so much money is owed, we need to call an international conference so that we raise money, structured money to fund the process without putting that albatross on our necks.
There is absolutely no point in demanding compensation which brings Government and people down. We should have a form of compensation package that uplifts Government and the entire Zimbabwe.
My view on this is that once you have the compensation agreement, tenure system and land market in place, that is going to be far greater in terms of value than any compensation.
Government, farmer representatives and official evaluators from both sides should come up with an agreed position on what is owing. The Government has already agreed that it will pay for improvements on land. The land now needs to be valued so that it is paid for.
Once we have agreed, we can then go to our international friends and ask them to assist. The key is that the structure we create must be the key to opening up investment and lines of credit. This country has been out of the international financial system for 17 years. Therefore, a lot of our technologies have not been refurbished because a lot of it is old.
Technology has moved so much and we now have the opportunity to redo our manufacturing sectors using latest technology.
We need to treat this compensation issue as part of Zimbabwe (Private) Limited. It’s part of the whole process of rebooting this country in all its forms, including its people.
It’s a fact that most of the farmers are ageing and compensation needs to be done quickly so that Zimbabwe benefits in future. I am very encouraged by what we are hearing in Government and, in the New Year, I hope we can hit the ground running on that.
One of the decisive developments on land between Zimbabwe and Britain was Claire Short’s insulting letter (stating) that the Blair administration did not respect the Lancaster House Agreement.
Q: How can this be corrected?
A: We have a Conservative government in Britain and I think they have an opportunity to mend the relationship with the Zimbabwe Government.
The Government of Zimbabwe also has that opportunity. We have Britain leaving the European Union and wanting to reboot its global footprint.
