ECONOMIC GOVERNANCE WATCH 5/2024
[30th October 2024]
Land Tenure Statement Issued by Government
Together with last Tuesday’s Post-Cabinet Press Briefing, the Cabinet issued a statement outlining the Government’s policy on land tenure. The Statement can be accessed on the Veritas website [link].
Before analysing the Statement we should point out that it gives only a sketchy outline of what the Government’s policy on land is or may be – it is not even clear if a policy has yet been fully formulated. Many important issues are not touched on in the Statement, and some of the points that are mentioned raise serious concerns.
Summary of the Statement
After noting that the land reform programme was carried out to address inequalities that existed during the colonial era and to ensure that every Zimbabwean has equitable access to agricultural land, the Statement says that most of the beneficiaries of the programme conduct farming as a business and that young people account for a significant proportion of the country’s commercial farmers. Beneficiaries, the Statement says, have benefited from various programmes to enhance their productivity and from the Government’s provision of infrastructure such as roads and dams.
Challenges
The Statement lists several challenges to the success of the programme:
·Farmers face difficulties in accessing finance for their farming activities
·Farmers do not have security of tenure and so have not fully developed their land holdings
·Succession to farmers’ land holdings after their death has created problems, because some holdings have been divided up among surviving relatives
·Farmers have failed to repay loans given or guaranteed by the Government
·Land barons have been allocating land for urban development without regard for planning laws.
New measures
To meet the challenges the Government will implement the following measures:
·Agricultural land held by farmers under 99-year leases, offer letters and permits will be held under bankable, registrable and transferable documents of tenure. This measure will “be informed by” the following guidelines:
o Priority will be given to war veterans, youths and women
o Land secured by the new documents will be transferable only among indigenous Zimbabweans
o The documents will not be issued for Communal Land.
·There is an immediate and indefinite moratorium on the issue of new 99-year leases, offer letters and permits for agricultural land.
·Urban land will be made commercially available only to credible and approved land developers who will comply with the law, so that high-quality housing developments are established.
·To oversee implementation of these measures the President has constituted a Cabinet Oversight Committee chaired by the Minister of Defence [why her?]. There will also be a Land Tenure Implementation Committee.
Comments
The Land Tenure Statement is couched in dense officialese which is sometimes difficult to understand – perhaps that is intentional – but peering through the murk one can discern some problems:
Tenure documents
The “bankable, registrable and transferable” documents of tenure have been mooted for a long time but have yet to see the light of day. If and when they are issued they will remedy at least one of the problems besetting the land reform programme: uncertainty about who holds the land. Properly drafted, they should provide evidence of the identity of the holders of the land and the boundaries of the land they hold.
On the other hand, by emphasising documents of tenure the Statement is putting the cart before the horse, because it is silent about the nature of the tenure under which farmers will hold their land. Will it be ownership? Will it be lease – and if so, for how long will the leases last and under what circumstances will they be cancelled? These are the factors that will determine whether farmers’ tenure is secure or precarious. Documents of tenure or title will provide evidence of who holds rights over the land, but the holders’ security of tenure will depend on the nature and extent of those rights.
It is nearly 25 years since the Land Reform Programme began, and one would have expected the Government to have worked out by now what form of land tenure beneficiaries of the programme should enjoy. If the Government has indeed decided on a land tenure system the Statement should have set it out.
“Bankable” documents?
When the Statement refers to “bankable” documents of tenure, it presumably means documents that will be accepted by banks as security for loans. This is shorthand for saying that farmers will be able to mortgage their land as collateral for loans they take out with financial institutions. Several points arise here:
·When deciding to grant a farmer a loan, a financial institution makes a commercial decision based on the likelihood of the farmer repaying the money lent. The financial institution takes many factors into account: the farmer’s competence, for example, and what the money will be used for. The security for the loan is only one of those factors.
·A financial institution will not accept a mortgage over a farmer’s land as security for a loan unless the institution is able to foreclose the mortgage in the event that the farmer fails to repay the loan – that is, unless the institution can have the farmer evicted from the land and the land resold to someone else at a price which allows the institution to recover what it lent to the farmer.
·The Government cannot simply order financial institutions to accept tenure documents as security for loans. Unless the above conditions are met, financial institutions will not lend money to farmers.
Non-indigenous Zimbabweans
Having recorded that the objectives of the Land Reform Programme were to “divest ownership of agricultural land from the minority white farmers to the black majority people of Zimbabwe” and also “to ensure that every Zimbabwean had equitable access to this finite resource”, the Statement goes on to say:
“Security of tenure to all land regularised under this programme, will at all time[s] only be transferable among indigenous Zimbabweans”.
If this means what it seems to mean, that agricultural land will be transferable only to indigenous Zimbabweans and that non-indigenous Zimbabwean citizens will not be allowed to hold agricultural land, then it is unconstitutional. One of the principles guiding policies on agricultural land, set out in section 289 of the Constitution, is:
“Subject to section 72 [which deals with the compulsory acquisition of land], every Zimbabwean citizen has a right to acquire, hold, occupy, use, transfer, hypothecate, lease or dispose of agricultural land regardless of his or her race or colour”
That principle must be observed whenever the State alienates agricultural land in terms of section 293 of the Constitution.
The Government needs to clarify whether non-indigenous Zimbabwean citizens who are currently occupying agricultural land will be allowed to continue occupying it, and whether and under what conditions non-indigenous citizens will be allowed to acquire agricultural land in the future. The government also needs to clarify the rights of farmers who hold land protected by BIPPA agreements
Current holders of agricultural land
Not only is the Statement unclear about the rights of non-indigenous citizens who are occupying agricultural land, it is not very clear about the rights of indigenous citizens who are current occupying it. The Statement says the new policy of issuing secure documents of tenure will be “informed by” guidelines, the first of which is that preference will be given to veterans of the Liberation Struggle, youths and women. Surely preference must be given to persons who are currently in lawful occupation of the land, whatever their background, age or gender? If they are not to be given preference, are they to be evicted in favour of new occupants – are we, in other words, going to have a new round of evictions and resettlements? Surely not.
Farmers who are currently in lawful occupation of agricultural land have vested rights to their land. The Government must show due respect for those vested rights as it is required to do by section 3(2)(k) of the Constitution.
Current holders of urban land
The Statement says that the activities of “land barons” have overstretched local authorities’ resources and that the Government proposes to put a stop to their activities, but it does not indicate how the Government proposes to remedy the damage they have already caused. Our main cities are surrounded by unplanned and illegal settlements, many of them lacking essential services and infrastructure. These settlements have increased the size of Harare by 20 per cent, and some of them overlap the city boundaries and extend into neighbouring rural areas. The Statement has nothing to say about what will happen to them. Will they be demolished? Will they be regularised, with their occupants receiving title to their land? The Statement’s silence suggests the Government has no answers to these pressing questions.
A further point is that the Statement suggests that the Government will put a stop to the land barons’ activities. This is the responsibility of the municipal and town councils whose land is being sold off by the barons. Rather than take action itself, the Government should assist the councils to regularise the position.
Paying for the land
The Statement gives no inkling about how the costs of resettlement are to be met. The Government has expended vast amounts of money in providing new farmers with inputs, in lending them money and in guaranteeing their loans from financial institutions. Most of those loans have not been repaid. There is no indication of how the Government will recoup its expenditure.
The Statement also does not indicate how the new farmers are going to be brought within the tax system of rural district councils and contribute their fair share towards the councils’ revenues.
A comprehensive land policy is needed
It seems illogical to exclude Communal Land – which is mostly agricultural – from an agricultural land policy. Admittedly different considerations apply to Communal Land from those applicable to land held under individual title, but an integrated land policy which aims at increasing agricultural production should take all rural land into account.
Conclusion
Agriculture is the bedrock of our economy and giving farmers secure title will encourage them to unlock the full value of their land. It is unfortunate that the Government’s statement does not provide information on what title farmers will be given and how secure their title will be. It is doubly unfortunate that the Government’s brief statement raises so many problems and unanswered questions.
