daniel chigunwe
THE sorting out of the urban planning mess and the catch up on the 1980s policy of converting local authority rented accommodation to rent-to-buy with past rent included is continuing with another 7 000 title deeds set to be issued within a month under the Presidential Title Deeds programme.
We have already seen the conversion of the promise of title deeds into reality. But what is happening now is the acceleration of the programme, the methods and systems that were worked out for the initial sets of deeds, which included high-end satellite mapping for the surveys, now becoming a routine process.
At the same time, the Government is using the successful survey methods and other experience to get the issue of title deeds to A1 and A2 farmers in the resettlement areas on the road and speeded up.
With the technical and administrative problems overcome and systems in place the process of issuing deeds is continuous.
Landholders have to cooperate with the authorities of course, from proving their identity and showing that they were the ones with the offer letter or those who were listed as holders of urban stands.
The Government has made it clear that those who jumped in later after cut-off points or who have taken over what would be a legitimate claim without going through the procedures are not included.
The programme is to give security of tenure and ownership to all legitimate landholders, President Mnangagwa has made clear, but also to regularise the landholdings and exclude those who have no right whatsoever to the land they are applying for.
The issue of title deeds is seen as an important part of the regularisation, allowing loans to be granted for services and bringing the new stands with their title deeds into the databases of local authorities and the owners becoming subject to the standard rates and levies that everyone else has to pay.
There will be debate as this process proceeds over what the stand owners have to pay for in development missed by the land barons who sold off the land, and what the councils will pay for out of the augmented rate revenue.
There are some historical precedents of what costs can be shared and what has to be paid by residents.
A lot of town planning law starts with the need to clean up the Avondale mess in Harare, when the eastern part of Avondale farm was simply sub-divided by its owner into housing plots at the beginning of last century, the size being set by the buyer.
This had to be incorporated into the early municipality a few years later and laws were pushed through to prevent a recurrence while the mess was regularised.
But that experience laid down the rules and the splits in development costs that can still be applied.
If anyone ever wonders why Avondale shopping centre appears to be built along a streambank it was because it developed from a tuckshop next to the only ford over that stream, so sometimes we can build up from an initial mistake.
One big block of those receiving title deeds and still being processed are those renting local authority property, especially in Chitungwiza.
In the early 1980s, the new Zanu PF Government put in place a policy to ensure that people living in high density suburbs in houses owned and rented by the local authorities could buy these properties with their past rents counted towards the sale.
Some high density housing, especially in Bulawayo, was already rent-to-buy, but in other areas, especially Harare, there had been strong resistance to black people owning property in city limits and the new policy meant that many of these tenants had already paid off their houses and could take possession as owners.
Others were still in the early years of renting or renting-to-buy, but were assured eventually of paying off the property costs.
Somehow, some authorities just kept collecting rents without conversion and it is this group who now have paid off their property costs and can be issued with title deeds.
This is probably the easiest group to fix since records exist and the property was at least properly planned, if not that well maintained by the previous owner.
The next easiest group are those in areas that were planned for urban development and where at least draft plans, and sometimes even final plans, existed setting aside road reserves, commercial centres and land for public amenities.
The land barons who sold off the stands might not have developed the services, but at least this can be done without much trouble and the surveying, even from space, can accurately set the boundary points.
Informal settlements are trickier since very often roads are not wide enough, land was not set aside for schools and clinics or even proper commercial buildings.
It is not impossible to develop these areas, but it will require more cooperation from residents. Parts of Epworth are in this boat with some better planned development as well.
But several decades of trying to fix up the new town, with its own local authority, have seen the worst of the planning problems sorted out and boundaries well established, which is why this is the first of the original unplanned settlements to be on the title deed lists, with some already holding deeds and large numbers getting them with each new batch.
Because a title deed is, in a sense, an eternal document transferring ownership, the Government has to get the process right and make sure that the new title deeds are as good as any other title deeds.
We do not need second-class title deeds and arguments in the courts. So the process is not instant.
But the Government has now converted the original special processes into a continuous process with thousands of deeds being prepared every month.
This success is now yet another of the milestones of the Second Republic.
Online Reporter