IRIN Focus on land dispute

Apparent confusion this week surrounded the Zimbabwe government’s policy towards war veterans illegally occupying commercial farms. On Wednesday, President Robert Mugabe reportedly said they would be removed, only to announce on Thursday that he had been misquoted.

Presidential spokesman George Charamba told IRIN on Thursday that the government’s position was clear: The veterans’ faction led by Chenjerai Hunzvi - militant supporters of the ruling party - would not be forced off the over 1,000 white-owned farms they have occupied, and instead would be among the beneficiaries of the government’s “fast-track” programme of land redistribution.

The government’s view

Charamba said the war veterans were mostly squatting on properties that the government had gazetted for acquisition or intended to takeover “shortly”. These included 804 farms from an original list issued in 1997, and an additional 2,237 announced on Monday which total just over five million hectares out of the government’s estimate of 12 million hectares of commercial farmland.

“The veterans won’t be moved from these properties as they are now, or will soon, belong to the state,” said Charamba. He added that all the 3,041 properties to be acquired for resettlement by landless black communal farmers meet established government criteria. They were either derelict, under-utilised, belonged to absentee landlords, adjacent to communal areas or under multiple ownership.

Charamba said there was a third category of farms under occupation which the government had no intention of taking over: “The war veterans will therefore be shifted from the third category to properties that are going to the landless. We are not saying they must move tomorrow, no. Their movement from these properties will be determined by the pace of resettlement.”

The land policy

The presidential spokesman stressed that commercial farmers’ complaints of violence and disruption of production by the veterans were exaggerated. He said an agreement reached between the farmers and veterans in April called for “peaceful coexistence” and any trouble was due to “a bellicose attitude” by some farmers or “criminals” among the squatters who were dealt with by the police.

Charamba denied that the government’s refusal to remove the veterans, as several court orders have demanded, amounted to it condoning lawlessness. “The war veterans are demonstrating and this is a democracy. A lawful state and a demonstrating citizenry are not mutually exclusive.”

He added that the government’s policy to redistribute five million hectares to ease rural poverty was agreed at a 1998 land conference involving stakeholders and donors. But, instead of being stretched over a number of years as originally envisaged, it has been “fast-tracked”.

In the absence of donor support - the international community stressed at the conference that land reform must be voluntary, transparent and part of a comprehensive development programme - the government’s new approach is to resettle people first, and provide infrastructure and support services later. Charamba said he doubted there would be a significant impact to the agricultural base of the country.

The commercial farmers’ position

Tim Henwood, president of the Commercial Farmers Union, vehemently disagreed. He told IRIN that the government’s plans to takeover the 3,041 farms would mean the “total destruction of the economic base of the country”. The CFU on Wednesday applied to the Supreme Court to halt the government’s programme, arguing that a government amendment to the constitution enabling the seizure of farms without compensation for the land was itself unconstitutional.

According to Henwood, at least 600 farms out of the 804 earmarked for acquisition were “highly productive and single-owned” and therefore did not meet the government’s own criteria. He said the CFU could help identify “hundreds” of other farms whose requisition would not affect agricultural output, or deepen the uncertainty and anxiety in the commercial sector.

He disputed the government’s figure of 12 million hectares of commercial land and claimed that only 8.2 million hectares were available. “Taking five million hectares out of that total would mean we are below the economic base of commercial agriculture, especially for tobacco”, the country’s main foreign exchange earner.

“The capacity to settle that many people is just not there,” Henwood said. “It could so easily be totally different if say 200-300 farms were selected for resettlement on an agreed basis, with training and infrastructural support as a phased programme. But to try a revolution in agricultural production in one season is a physical impossibility”.

On the apparent contradictory government statements this week over the land issue and role of the veterans, Henwood said he believed policy was being driven by the president’s office rather than the ministers. “The cabinet itself is trying to do good things, only to be countermanded by the president,” he added.