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The decision to grant title deeds, announced recently by President Mnangagwa, to the victims of land barons and other criminals selling land they did not own across Zimbabwe’s urban areas is a serious attempt to sort out an otherwise impossible mess.
With usual Second Republic efficiency the process is underway, and it is not just some sort of pie in the sky, but a practical programme.
The first stage is almost complete for the first 15 urban settlements. This is the mapping, finding out where the stands and houses actually are, where land has been set aside for roads, and what other land use allocations have been made.
Drones have been deployed for aerial mapping to speed up the process.
This is the function of the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education, Innovation, Science and Technology, which has access to the necessary technical equipment and skills, to produce the detailed map-quality imaging needed for the town planners in the Ministry of Local Government and Public Works.
This stage should be complete within the next four or so weeks.
Some of the areas had a degree of planning, with stands or blocks of land that could be divided into stands already on the plans.
Obviously for the final mapping the planners need to know how close the barons were to the plans. In other areas there was nothing much in plans and just some amateur arrangements made by the barons, and here detailed plans need to be drawn up.
Title deeds are very precise documents, saying who owns a particular stand or subdivision.
So among the initial processes is making sure that each of those stands is precisely defined so that there are no arguments later over who owns what.
The planners also have to make sure that the basic planning requirements are in place. This means there is need to watch wetlands, need to make sure that the road reserves are the right width, need to make sure other servitudes are in place and need to make sure land has been set aside for schools and clinics and other public services.
Depending on the greed of the barons, this might mean some people may have to be shifted around in a suburb.
So among the detailed planning required is to ensure that adequate alternative land is set aside for these people. Some planning requirements can be allowed to be modified, but some have to be enforced.
We do not need new Epworths, but on the other hand can possibly live with an Avondale type layout, as that suburb was subdivided before rules on school sites, wetlands and public spaces were promulgated, but the suburb is still liveable.
The main thing is that the technical teams are moving fast to convert a policy into a stack of documents.
The main purpose of getting title deeds to those in these new suburbs is then to move into the next stage, the provision of services. This means roads, sewers, water supplies and electricity.
While properly designated stands allows rates to be allocated and collected, this under present urban councils might not amount to much help when it comes to servicing.
Residents may have to figure out ways of funding this, or at least partly funding this.
Title deeds give both the security that any improvements accrue to the owners, but also provide the security if money has to be borrowed. Usually when urban stands are sold the developer, who can be a local authority or the Government, does the servicing in advance.
This servicing is what creates much of the final selling price, converting cheap farm land into more valuable urban land. It is the lack of such services, along with other problems, that is the legacy of the land barons.
Some of the development of services can be done in stages. Roads in most of these settlements were nothing more than tracks, hopefully in the right place, and are quickly and seriously damaged and eroded.
Even gravel roads, where a proper roadbed is laid and storm water drainage is arranged can be a major improvement and if the roads are graded once a year such roads are often better than just a thin-tar surfaced road.
Water mains and sewer mains can be advanced in stages, the water mains from the uphill end of the suburb and the sewer mains from the downhill end, since both rely on gravity.
The new suburbs also need to be incorporated practically into their local authorities. Generally they are already within the city or town boundaries, but do not have representation on the city council, or at least do not have fair representation on the council. This is also required.
The other policy that must be now be pressed is that we should never be in this position again.
Shoddy control by municipal officials created a lot of the mess, and in some cases they were not just inefficient but actively in league with the land barons and sometimes even were a land baron themselves.
What is now needed is to insist new development follows the planning rules. The present system of working out where the stands are and then allocating title deeds is necessary to clean up the mess and ensure the victims of the barons do not unduly suffer.
But when there is proper development buyer get their title deed at the very beginning, and can use it in fact to secure the loans they need to build their home.
The Government was correct to sort out the mess created by criminals, but the local authorities now need to stop messing around and ensure they know where development is taking place and ensure that this follows the application of the proper planning and building rules, instead of leaving to those who live in these areas and the Government itself to clean up later.
Online Reporter