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Robin Muchetu Senior Reporter
GOVERNMENT has given unproductive beneficiaries of the land reform programme a three-year ultimatum to fully utilise their land or lose it to serious farmers who will aid the much-needed economic development. Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa said this while addressing thousands of Zanu-PF supporters at a star rally in Bulawayo recently. “Whoever was given land and is failing to make use of it, we will take it back. We will give them a warning of three years. If they continue sleeping on the land we will ask them to sleep elsewhere and we take our land,” he said.
VP Mngangagwa said Government was ready to take land that is idle throughout the country and allocate it to farmers that are serious.
“When we took the land from British farmers they imposed sanctions on us. They told the President that there was chaos in the country and that it was now riotous. They said we must put law and order. So it is time to work on this land that we fought for,” he said.
“There was no textbook which had instructions on how to take our land back and we decided to act by taking the land. There is no land revolution that can be conducted using textbooks; you first of all recover your land and say this is how we did it. We chased away the thieves that had taken our land now those who want to write can now write about how land is taken.”
Government recently embarked on a land audit that seeks to redress various issues, among them land disputes, cases of multiple farm ownership, account for land that is being underutilised as well as investigate reports that some resettled farmers were leasing out their farms to white former commercial farmers.
Lands and Rural Resettlement Minister Cde Douglas Mombeshora revealed that his ministry had secured $7 million from the European Union and United Nations Development Fund to carry out a two-year land audit programme.
Zanu-PF secretary for land reform and resettlement in the Politburo Cde Cain Mathema also reiterated the
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