AFTER violently grabbing farms through a chaotic land reform programme which destroyed the economy (land was previously seized during colonialism) Zimbabwe’s political leaders – who own multiple, yet unproductive farms – have conveniently manipulated policy to give themselves and their supporters title deeds to sell the properties they got for free to enrich themselves.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa and Zanu PF leaders involved in land grabs – the new land elites – and subsequent policy manipulation want to benefit themselves – yet again – from the state-sponsored unstructured land expropriation with attendant corruption-driven acquisition and forceful evictions of white farmers under the pretext of ensuring security of tenure, creating a dynamic land market and boosting production.
The new patronaged-based Zanu PF land aristocracy emerged after 2000 when political bigwigs, high-profile government officials, civil servants and security services chiefs, as well their relatives, friends and cronies seized farms, got free land, equipment, farm houses, yields in some cases and even cattle at the height of the late former president Robert Mugabe’s brutal expropriation policy motivated by political survival.
In the process, they trampled on property rights and ruined the economy, which has now plateaud in crisis for decades. Secure property rights, security of tenure and efficient land registration institutions are a cornerstone of any modern economy.
They give critical confidence to individuals and businesses to invest in land, allow private companies to borrow – using land as a collateral – to expand job opportunities, and enable governments to collect property taxes, necessary to finance the provision of infrastructure and services to citizens.
Now the political class simply wants to capitalise on seized land which now lies fallow and derelict to make easy cash.
This means only a small part of the 16 million population will benefit from this policy in which politicians and their supporters got free land which they badly ran down, but now want to cash in on, making more money for themselves without improving the properties and production at all.
To make things worse, the new policy is also racialised as it allows people with new title deeds to only sell land or farms to “indigenous Zimbabweans”, euphemism for black people.
This will further lock the country in a situation where land is dead capital, keeping the economy in the doldrums and the country reeling from crisis and poverty for decades.
Without a land tenure system that works, Zimbabwe risks remaining deeper in the economic quagmire, further threatening the already difficult livelihoods of the poor and vulnerable the most.
It is simply not possible to end poverty and boost shared prosperity without making serious progress on land and property rights, one of Zanu PF and its government’s major policy failures which, together with leadership and governance incompetence, condemned the country to being a practically failed state by many measures and accounts.
