The Sunday Mail
Double land allocations are a problem which the Lands and Rural Resettlement Ministry is seized with. The ministry does not have a computerised system to capture the names of land reform beneficiaries. Therefore, we are working diligently to come up with an up-to-date database.
Double allocations should not have arisen in the first place as data-capturing is supposed to be done on the day a farm is acquired.
The subsequent processes include mapping out and subdividing the property. The challenge has been creating a map where people have already settled.
There are often wrong boundaries, and correcting them has been a real problem.
We are now updating our database to capture details of every farm as well as maps that show everything on farms and beneficiaries’ names.
Soon, at the click of a button, we will know who was resettled where and what he/she is doing.
That will enable us to pick anomalies so that the Surveyor-General’s Department does a proper survey.
We are pleased that the department has been capacitated, although more still needs to be done.
But to some extent, we can safely say a lot of work has been done.
When I came to the ministry in 2013, there were only four surveyors, but now we have 21.
We have also recruited about 50 survey technicians.
Government is rationalising staff, but we are negotiating so that we recruit were it is critical to do so.
Further, we have managed to buy equipment for our surveyors to replace the obsolete and often unreliable kits they had.
Now, we have digital means of conducting surveys, precisely via the GPS system.
We have 50 GPS sets, and our officers are already being trained to use that equipment which is at least 10 times faster and more accurate.
Accuracy, even in terms of centimetres, is very important if you are pegging boundaries.
Previously, estimates were largely used to peg boundaries.
I guess that pretty much sums up why it was termed the “Fast Track Land Reform”.
We are now perfecting our work, and all boundaries have coordinates that will be captured in the 99-year lease and A1 permit.
This information will be at the Surveyor-General’s Department, helping us reduce boundary disputes and enable people to concentrate on production.
It’s a countrywide process.
We are happy that Treasury and the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe have given us enough money to purchase vehicles and equipment to enable our officers to do their work countrywide.
They have also provided travel and subsistence allowances.
The evaluation has been halted in a good number of areas to allow the rains to clear.
However, work in Mashonaland Central has since been completed; meaning all the farms Government acquired there under the land reform programme have been evaluated.
What remains is collating compensation figures.
Initially,14 teams were in that province, completing their work in three months. Six more teams were assembled, after which the 20 teams were then halved.
One unit will operate in Mashonaland East and the other in Mashonaland West.
The teams will report land underutilisation and farm infrastructure use.
Some people are just staying in Government houses without paying, so we want to get all that information together so that we can plan properly.
And by the way, our officers have also been picking up certain pieces of land that were not occupied.
Land use and corruption
We are going to repossess and then reallocate vacant plots, while underutilised land, especially under the A2 model, will be downsized. Government will not take away land from someone on the ground, but will replan and downsize where necessary in order to increase land use.
It’s the same process as downsizing, except that this one targets those who are not using land properly or optimally because their farm is too big for them.
It should be clear that we don’t want to downsize the properties of productive farmers.
If someone has above maximum farm size but is utilising that property optimally, then we’d rather support that farmer to increase production.
This is what we have been doing.
I now turn to corruption. You know that corruption is very difficult to deal with because it’s like a mafia system.
Yes, some people become careless somewhere and you detect it.
That’s how we have managed to arrest some of our staff who were involved in corruption, otherwise you don’t know what is happening and can only rely on whistle-blower information.
More than 10 officers who were in the system have either been dismissed or suspended for corrupt land allocations.
Some cases have been referred to the court, but this route presents problems for us as those convicted get community service, and that does not warrant dismissal from work.
Some of the culprits included district lands committees, chiefs and provincial lands committees.
These individuals were the land allocation system.
However, we now face challenges where legally, chiefs don’t allocate land like they do in their communities.
The A1 model was mainly meant to decongest communal areas where chiefs preside and, therefore, know their areas pretty well. But the problem we have realised is that when we started, all these areas didn’t have traditional leaders to preside over them.
Remember, during colonialism, the colonial settlers refused to be led by traditional leaders when they removed our people from their land to create commercial farms.
Those are the farms we resettled our people on, and chiefs preside over them.
The first thing chiefs did was to install village heads, some of whom are now causing problems by selling State land.
In some cases, they allocate land earmarked for other developmental purposes, grazing or forestry.
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So, this has created a lot of illegal settlements and chaos in resettlement areas.
The process of removing people in such settlements is now at an advanced stage.
We warned and gave them a September 2016 ultimatum, but later felt that we needed more time to talk to political leaders in all provinces because village heads are not the only ones doing this.
Politicians too, councillors and Members of Parliament are included.
There are also ordinary citizens and rogue elements dishing out land illegally.
That is wrong!
People must follow proper channels.
But like I said, we are working with other Government departments to correct anomalies and will catch the culprits.
We want them to account for their illegal activities.
We have already dispatched teams to engage illegal settlers as they are farming in wetlands, felling trees and causing serious land degradation.
And all this has led to unnecessary land disputes in otherwise well-planned areas.
The farming business
Agriculture is a business. Therefore, like any other business, people can borrow money, have joint ventures, and be part of contract arrangements.
What we are saying is that the land is not yours, so you cannot plan without State consent.
At the same time, we don’t want our farmers or partners to be exploited, and that makes transparent partnerships imperative.
So, the ministry is checking partnerships through its legal department to ensure they benefit both the farmer and investor.
In a nutshell, the ministry approves partnerships.
What we are doing is part of land administration.
An audit will be done by the Land Commission which is already in place.
Inspection is supposed to be done at least twice a year but we are only doing it once due to financial constraints.
The Surveyor-General’s Department is also verifying our international borders. We had targeted to do 200 km, but have only done 140 km as our resources are scarce.
The process involves placing pegs or beacons along the borders.
Work is being carried out on the Botswana border, and we hope to have gone round the entire country within the next two years. We have a challenge, however, on our Eastern border because quite a length of it has landmines that were planted during Zimbabwe’s liberation war.
Demining is incomplete, therefore, we are uncomfortable sending surveyors there.
This border verification programme is part of an African Union initiative whose completion deadline has been moved from 2017 to 2022.
Dr Douglas Mombeshora is the Minister of Lands and Rural Resettlement. He was speaking to Sunday Mail reporter Tinashe Farawo in Harare last week.
