Pace of land reform criticised

The slow pace of land reform in Zimbabwe, aimed at correcting a historical imbalance in land ownership and boosting rural development is “disappointing”, analysts and diplomats told IRIN on Thursday. Fifteen months after a land reform conference set the framework for the purchase of largely white-owned commercial farms for redistribution to landless black peasants, there has been little in the way of government or international financial support for the inception phase of the programme. “The framework is there but land reform is moving slowly,” Sam Moyo who led the government’s technical team on land reform told IRIN. The ambitious inception phase of the programme calls for the resettlement of 77,000 rural families on a million hectares over two years based on principles of transparency in the selection of beneficiaries and poverty alleviation criteria. The donors and government were to provide 40 percent each for the funding of the inception phase, with the private sector and civil society providing the remainder. But “we are not anywhere near the money needed,” Moyo said, and on average only 50 farms were being redistributed a year. According to the land expert, the government has only provided some 10 to 15 percent of its planned spending, with donor funding limited to little more than the start-up money for technical support of the trial phase. Moyo said part of the problem was that attention to redistribution was being diverted by the government’s programme of leasing land it has bought in the past to black commercial farmers, which donors have criticised as benefiting in some cases members of the government and senior civil servants. A Western embassy official said that running two land initiatives in parallel - one of which on occasion had rewarded government ministers - had confused the debate at a time when the government does not have the resources to adequately support land redistribution for landless rural families. “Donors find it difficult to support land reform in Zimbabwe when they can see some land has not been transferred in an untransparent way,” he told IRIN. The envoy said the principles of the land conference needed to be revisited, as “donors are concerned over how beneficiaries are selected” within a scheme that was about “transferring land to poor people.” Land ownership was at the heart of Zimbabwe’s liberation war. Some 11 million hectares of prime land is owned by 4,500 mostly white commercial farmers. Over six million black Zimbabweans are crowded onto barren communal areas, reinforcing rural poverty and reflecting an unchanged colonial legacy.