Ghost of Rhodesia’s land tenure

they are separated by equally interlocking valleys and chattering streams, scampering in all directions.

On further scrutiny, there exists an equally awkward human settlement sparsely dotted like bird’s droppings and clinging precariously on mountain slopes.
In ancient times, it is almost certain that nature’s exhaustless generosity, gifted these rivers and streams with running crystal clear water, that left stones polished, as if they were worked on by a precision grinder.

Today, the rivers and streams are ghosts of their ancient past, for, when colonial Rhodesia’s land tenure system dawned, the natives found themselves on the receiving end.
They were dispossessed of their prime farming land in Chipuriro Tribal Trust Land, evicted and forced to perch on the mountain slopes like birds on squeaky tree branches.
Welcome to Bakasa communal lands in Mbire district, the outstanding ghost of colonial Rhodesia’s land tenure system.

“We gave way to the demarcation of farms for the white man. It was a few years after the Second World War. Our village occupied both sides of the Dande River.
“When the Prazero system came, those occupying land on the eastern side of Dande River, between the river and Mavhuradonha Mountains, were dispossessed and moved to these mountain where there is no land to till except mountain slopes.

“They then renamed the area Horse Shoe Commercial farming area, because the shape of the land between the two geographical structures looked and still look, like the shoe of a horse,” says villager Mickon Mushoshoma.
The villagers were disheartened, demoralised and ruthlessly condemned to the mountainous, that overlooks the Dande communal lands.

Without taking anything from the villagers, it would be a miracle for any villager there to harvest as little at 10 bags of maize.
Even when the land reform programme came, a decade ago, the villagers were do disheartened that they did not embrace the project and remained perched on the mountain side.
“When the land reform programme came, we thought we could not move yet again. We are tired of resettling.

“It is a very difficult job to build a house on the mountain slope.
“It is difficult to farm on the hill slope and it is difficult, especially for our women to climb up the hill with buckets of water. Our women here are very strong and they climb up every day. No one can drive home here. If you come from anywhere and you have a car, you leave it by the main road or by the shopping centre.

“Even carrying a coffin is very difficult, let alone finding burial places, so we end up burying our dead in the valleys and that might affect our drinking water,” says Mr Mushoshoma.
Today because of the mountain slope cultivation, the streams from Bakasa have been singled out as the only fact why Kadzi, Dande, Mwanzamutanda, Hunyani, Musengezi, Sapa and Chimururi rivers are choked with siltation.

So silted are the rivers that villagers in the valley below grow huge hectares of maize on the riverbed during the dry season.
Back to Bakasa communal lands, since the soils on the slopes do not promote maize production, the villagers in the area have learnt so many ways to supplement their poor yields.
The majority of them are surviving on selling bananas at the Bakasa Shopping Centre and others foot long distances on daily basis to and from Mahuwe Township in Mbire District.

Mahuwe is a fast growing township about six kilometres at the foot of Mavhuradonha Mountain Range as the road meanders down in the valley to Mbire.
Child labour has become rampant as school-going age girls are caught in the web of vending and end up, abandoning school.

Child vending had also brought another scourge of child pregnancy.
The girl child sometimes braves the chilly whether and at night as business become brisk at night, they are left to stay late vending.

School dropout Chipo Chiunye (15) said she was impregnated by a kombi driver who used to offer free transport to commute to and from Bakasa to Mahuwe Business Centre to vend.
“I live with my grandmother ever since my mother passed away. We survive on selling bananas and the old woman is based at Bakasa shops and in my case she assigns me to vend in Mahuwe. I used to walk on foot from Bakasa to Mahuwe now I know the kombi boys so tinoitamba irikurira. (I dance to the tune).

“The situation pressurised me to succumb to transport in exchange with sexual favours.
“But as soon as I got pregnant, the father of my child changed the route. His friends say he is now in Kwekwe,” she said.

Young boys below the age of 14 are also loiter around the town-ship selling bananas during the day and sometimes late into the night.
The boys and men survive primitively as they go and hunt deep in the thickets of Mavhuradona range and yonder.
Their habit is of giving away a goat in favour of a dog for hunting purposes.

The culture prevailing in Bakasa values a dog more than human life.
The lion-hearted boys and men hunt down warthogs mainly and sale the meat in Mahuwe.

Former councillor for Mutota Ward Phinzous Mudanwa decried Rhodesia land tenure system, saying it was responsible for the poverty that has stalked the villagers for years.
“I am the only one who opted for the land reform programme, the rest of the people there are no longer interested in moving elsewhere.

“They were pained the time they were evicted. They felt cheated and they suffered a lot. They have given up,” he said.