Call to commercialise rural areas

Zimbabwe’s opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) this week said there was an urgent need to bring the under-utilised communal lands into the mainstream of the economy as part of a serious land reform programme.

Media reports quoted MDC’s secretary for lands, Tendai Biti, as saying urbanisation was the ultimate answer to the country’s food security and that bringing rural areas into the formal economy was one of the highlights of the MDC land reform programme.

Said Biti: “Any MDC land reform programme must be aimed at totally destroying the dual economy that exists in this country. At least 19 million hectares of land representing at least 48 percent of the land in this country is communal land that is being used at sub-standard and sub- scientific levels.

Criticising President Robert Mugabe’s policy to nationalise 3,270 farms, Biti said by continuing to give people land without providing title deeds and resources, the government was sentencing peasants to a life of perpetual subsistence and this had no place in a serious land reform programme.