Land resettlement to begin

The Zimbabwe government is to officially launch the first phase of an “accelerated” programme for land redistribution and resettlement on Saturday, presidential spokesman Mundaradzi Hwengwere told IRIN.

The programme involves 160 compulsorily acquired commercial farms out of 804 listed by the government in 1997, the official ‘The Herald’ newspaper reported this week. Some war veterans and land-hungry villagers currently illegally occupying property are to be moved to the newly acquired farms and settled permanently, the newspaper said.

The government is under pressure from its supporters to make good on its election promise of land reform, analysts said, and the ruling ZANU-PF politburo met this week to discuss the issue. Zimbabwe’s war veterans, who led a violent rural campaign of illegal takeovers of white commercial farms ahead of parliamentary elections in June, are to meet with government officials on Saturday to press their demands for faster land redistribution by the state, the weekly ‘Zimbabwe Independent’ reported on Friday.

“What led to the war veterans occupying farms was the desire to see a speedy land resettlement programme,” Hwengwere said. “Saturday’s launch is a response to that call for land distribution.”

The constitution was amended in April to allow the government to compulsorily acquire farms, paying only for improvements to the property rather than the land itself. The government’s target is to acquire five million hectares owned by white farmers for the resettlement of the black rural poor. They have remained crowded on barren communal lands, despite repeated promises of reform since independence in 1980.

The 804 farms listed by the government for acquisition represent some two million hectares. Selection was based on the criteria of whether they are under-utilised, close to communal areas, foreign owned, or in the hands of individuals who own several other farms.

According to a University of Zimbabwe land expert who has studied the selection process, “90 percent” of the farms met the government’s criteria. “Most of the 804 farms are above the recommended farm size and cannot be productively farmed,” he told IRIN. He added that over half of them are in the hands of individuals who own multiple farms.

However, rather than the government using land resettlement within a context of a comprehensive rural poverty alleviation programme, “the government is saying that given the delays that have happened in the past and the lack of donor commitment, it maybe better to allocate the land first and maybe infrastructure will come later,” the researcher said.