New Land Audit leaves government ‘entangled’
Harare- GOVERNMENT is reportedly in a Catch 22 situation on how to go forward in regards formulating a sound land utilization policy after the official presentation and hand over of the Land Information Management System (LIMS) Audited Farms Database to President Emmerson Mnangagwa by Zimbabwe Land Commission (ZLC) chairperson commissioner Tendai Bare at State House on Wednesday, Express Mail Zim has learnt.
Sources say the government has its hands tied since part of the new audit exposed powerful politicians and Zanu PF ‘bourgeois’ who enjoyed an excellent relationship with those controlling the levers of power.
“The Land audit is a noble exercise and I applaud government for embarking on the exercise but they now face a challenge since most people who are multiple farm owners are part of the system, while some leased the farms without government approval.
“So it’s a sticky situation on how to reprimand these political elites some of who pump money into the ruling party,” said our source.
The audit covered the country’s 10 districts and 10 provinces.
The auditing proccess is said to have unearthed fraudulent land allocations and other gross irregularities that resulted in low agricultural output in the country.
Zimbabwe embarked on a controversial land reform programme at the turn of the century which was set to correct nearly a century old land imbalances brought by white colonialism.
Over 4,500 white settler farmers were thrown out of tracts of arable land through a combination of force and other forms of inducement by the then late president Robert Mugabe led government.
His wife Grace Mugabe is reported to have owned more than 15 farms but failed to settle salaries owed to farm workers forcing the auctioning of some of farm equipment in the Second Republic.
