Online Reporter
Peter Matika, [email protected]
GOVERNMENT has dismissed claims of a reversal of the Land Reform Programme, saying the redistribution exercise remains irreversible while measures are being implemented to regularise land ownership and protect investments.
Minister of Agriculture, Mechanisation and Water Resources Development, Dr Anxious Jongwe Masuka, said recent remarks made in Parliament had been misinterpreted.
Dr Masuka, who was responding in his capacity as leader of Government Business and in the absence of the Minister of Lands and Rural Development, said the Second Republic under President Mnangagwa had taken unprecedented steps to empower farmers through secure land tenure.
Dr Masuka said the Government was in the process of issuing title deeds to 360 000 A1 farmers and 23 500 A2 farmers across the country.
He also said 840 indigenous farms that had been gazetted at the height of the land reform programme would be returned to their owners.
He added that 67 farms protected under Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreements (BIPPAs), which were gazetted but remained unoccupied, would also be returned to the investors.
Dr Masuka said former farm owners peacefully co-existing with beneficiaries on 409 farms would be allowed to purchase the land or portions thereof under a set-off arrangement for developments made on the properties.
“The investments on the farms should be compensated, but not the land,” he said.
Dr Masuka further revealed that President Mnangagwa had directed the issuance of title deeds to 10 000 Matenganyika farmers who continue to hold leases issued before Independence.
He said the land remained central to Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle, with thousands of black Zimbabweans having taken up arms to fight colonial oppression and reclaim ancestral land.
“Now the people are with their land and the land with its masters. Land reform is, therefore, irreversible,” he said.
