Focus on Utete committee report on agrarian reform

Zimbabwe's "fast-track" agrarian reform programme has redistributed far less land than has been claimed in a process dogged by administrative shortcomings and interference by officials, according to a presidential land review committee. President Robert Mugabe set up the committee in May to examine the implementation of land redistribution to black commercial and communal farmers, as well as looking into its impact on former commercial farmers and workers. The committee was headed by influential former secretary to the cabinet, Charles Utete. The team gathered evidence from a wide selection of stakeholders, among them government ministers, provincial land committee members, chiefs, aspiring and actual beneficiaries, and representatives of indigenous commercial farmers' unions. SMALLER NUMBER OF RESETTLED The ministries of agriculture and information had repeatedly claimed that about 300,000 new farmers had been resettled, and close to 11 million hectares acquired from former commercial farmers under the fast-track programme, adopted by the government in July 2000 after a wave of often violent farm invasions led by veterans of Zimbabwe's armed struggle. However, according to the report, the committee found that only some 4.2 million hectares had been taken up by 127,192 households under the A1 resettlement model designed to benefit small-scale farmers. Rather than the government's claim of 50,000 new commercial farmers created under the programme, the committee said that just 1,672 "A2" farms, a total of 2.1 million hectares, were resettled by 7,260 beneficiaries. The report, finalised in August but not widely available, lauded the goal of the government's fast-track programme, but said agrarian reform was tarnished by bureaucratic bungling and irregularities. "Ministers and other government officials wholly supported the programme, stated it to have been successfully implemented in the face of formidable odds, but variously noted numerous obstacles that impinged on the implementation process, including resource constraints, the legal framework, bureaucracy and related operational difficulties," the committee said. "It should be noted that the process of acquiring and distributing land to the people under the two resettlement models, the A1 and A2, was undertaken in a complex legal framework which rendered the process both difficult and cumbersome. As the committee went about its work, it could not fail to be struck by the number and variety of legal issues that still required resolution in respect of the acquisition procedures; the allocation of land to beneficiaries, especially under the A2 model; the assessment of the value of improvements; and ownership and access to moveable assets on the farms," the report stated. It pointed to the number of legal challenges to government acquisition orders, lodged in Administrative Courts by commercial farmers. The Utete report acknowledged that a significant number of commercial farmers owning multiple farms had approached the authorities to voluntarily surrender all but a single property, but had still lost all their land. Similarly, owners of just one farm also had their property compulsorily acquired, even though they had met all the criteria which should have allowed them to keep it. "These matters need to be addressed by government conclusively and expeditiously, to allow for productive use of the land and a sense of certainty about the future of the farmers concerned," stated the report. COMMERCIAL FARMERS STILL UNDER THREAT During their annual general meeting in August, the remaining members of the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) charged that production had been further undermined by the uncertainty over the status of their farms. The UN World Food Programme has noted that agrarian reform has been one of the causes of Zimbabwe's two successive years of serious food insecurity. The Utete report said that out of 4,500 commercial farmers before the fast-track programme, 1,323 were still farming on 1,377 estates. That figure has been disputed by the CFU. It has insisted that the remaining farmers amount to no more than 600, with the authorities continuing to list farms for seizure, and some farmers still facing threats of violence from new settlers. The committee recommended that some dairy farms be returned to their original owners to resuscitate the dairy industry, which has suffered a severe knock since the beginning of the land reform programme. But in a recent speech on state radio the minister of information, Jonathan Moyo, dismissed the likelihood that any white farmers would be returned to their original property. This week, John Nkomo, minister of special affairs in the President's Office, told an economic conference in Harare: "Our agrarian reforms have reorganised one of the major natural resources possessed by this country - the land. The country's land gains are irreversible." An issue seized on by the media was the committee's recognition that the government's "one man, one farm" policy had not been respected by some senior officials. An annex to the report, which has not been made public, named 178 senior officials who had allegedly violated the policy, amassing about 150,000 hectares of prime land between them. Mugabe recently ordered all officials to surrender their excess farms, but there have been few details on compliance with the directive. LACK OF MANAGEMENT The committee noted that the policy breaches were to a large extent caused by "deficiencies in programme planning, administration and management". "As for the problems of administration and management ... some provincial or district officials acted, ultra vires (exceeding their authority), by, for example, allocating land to individuals of their choice, or by delaying, or failing to forward, letters of offer of land to successful applicants for plots demarcated for the A2 resettlement model," the report observed. The committee found that the "welter" of ministries, departments, parastatals, taskforces and informal groups included in the redistribution exercise had opened the way for some individuals to exert unnecessary influence on the process, and said a more centralised programme would have been more effective. The report also pointed to illegal land take-overs in conservancies, plantations, safari and forest areas, particularly in Masvingo, Manicaland and Matebeleland provinces, where some settlers were involved in poaching. Since attempts to subdivide such areas into individual plots "would clearly be unviable", the report called for the immediate removal of the squatters to preserve wildlife, which had the capacity to generate foreign currency for the country. The committee also suggested an "overhaul of the machinery of government involved in land and agricultural affairs", saying there should be a ministry of agriculture, and another for land affairs. The former would deal with agricultural matters relating to water development and irrigation, while the latter would have responsibility for all land issues, including land registration, resolution of boundary disputes, compensation, farm sizes and land allocation. There was a need, the committee said, for a semi-autonomous national land board that exercised both executive and advisory functions in the proposed land affairs ministry. The land board would also ensure that land allocated to people under the fast-track programme was fully utilised. MIXED REACTIONS Analysts and observers have greeted the report with mixed feelings. Ibbo Mandaza, a political scientist and publisher, said the Utete report was an "exercise designed to lay the policy foundations through which to successfully conclude the agrarian reform process in Zimbabwe". He hailed the document for being "scathing in its criticism" of some public officials, among them government ministers and provincial governors. Mandaza, in an opinion column in his pro-government Sunday Mirror newspaper, said because the report revealed maladministration and anomalies in the way land was reallocated, it provided a "solid critique of the implementation exercise, whilst also offering a solution". He urged the government to move quickly to address the concerns raised by the Utete committee. "The report is a major advance ... provided requisite and expeditious action is taken by the government of Zimbabwe, to clean up the [land reform] programme and implement its recommendations." However, Douglas Taylor-Freeme of the CFU said he was pessimistic that the suggestions made in the report would be respected. "There is no reason to be upbeat about the report, because we have seen the government set commissions whose recommendations have been left to gather dust," he told IRIN. He said the government lacked the capacity and political will to implement the Utete recommendations, but in order to resolve the impasse on land, there was a need for all stakeholders to come together and discuss the way forward. "If we had been allowed to sit down together meaningfully before the farm invasions, or even when the fast-track exercise was taking place, we would have avoided such glaring violations of set-down policy as the "one man, one farm" principle," Taylor-Freeme said. Silas Hungwe, president of the Zimbabwe Farmers' Union, which represents black farmers, said the report's recommendations should be followed for the government to escape the accusation that the land redistribution programme was merely a political expedience. "The report was compiled by experts who know the field of agriculture very well. Their recommendations should be stuck to if agriculture is to become productive again. There should be no political interference," Hungwe told IRIN.