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Writes Elvis Dumba
Chinhoyi – The newly proclaimed land tenure policy will help to correct anomalies in the farming land distribution, a ZANU (PF) Politburo and Cabinet Minister has said.
The government recently announced an indefinite moratorium on the issuance of any new 99-year leases, offer letters, and permits for agricultural land.
Under the new policy, beneficiaries of the land redistribution exercise that dispossessed former colonial white commercial farmers will get enhanced security of tenure to unlock the value of the land.
Speaking during a ZANU (PF) Provincial Coordination Committee meeting in Chinhoyi, Hon Ziyambi Ziyambi who is the Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs said the new policy is a game changer as it will allow farmers to receive title deeds of the land which they will be able to use to access agriculture funds from commercial institutions.
“The President proclaimed a new land tenure policy which is a game changer as it now puts value on the land owned by an Indigenous person who benefited from the land. Before this, the land we had was just a dead asset as no value could be affixed to it since the person who was using the land had no exclusive rights to the land and could not approach banks to get financial assistance for his operations which this policy is correcting,” he said.
Minister Ziyambi also said the new land tenure policy will protect beneficiaries of the land reform from willy-nilly dispositions of their land through unjustified land offer withdrawals.
“We had instances where officials from the agriculture ministry would withdraw offer letters of some of the land owners and corruptly allocate the land to others in the guise of land replanning. This policy will put to end corrupt tendencies which were being done by corrupt land officers and through some Ministers of State offices,” he said.
Minister Ziyambi said the policy will also help to expose those with multiple farm ownership and reveal idle land and underutilized farms.
“This will also deal with the issue of one person owning more than one farm and through an audit, this will also help to unveil some idle land and people should be happy that it will be now easy to find where there is a vacant piece of land and a new system on land allocation with no window for corrupt allocations.”
Meanwhile, Minister Ziyambi said the government through parliament, has inherited and agreed to pay off agriculture debts owned by thousands of farmers who had accessed agricultural inputs from various government schemes.
“Recently, in parliament, we requested that the government pay the huge debts which were owned by farmers who didn’t pay back the government for agricultural inputs they had received through various schemes such as Command Agriculture, Maguta, and others.
“That debt will now be paid off by the government. From now on, with the new land tenure policy, farmers will now get financed through banks that will get their title deeds as collateral. If someone fails to service his or her debt, they risk losing the land,” Minister Ziyambi said.