Name and shame those leasing land to white former farmers

beneficiaries are leasing farms to white former commercial farmers.
The reports are not new, as the practice is rampant in most parts of the country.

There are quite a number of indigenous farmers who have decided, against all reason, to go to bed with the white former commercial farmers, the same people that we fought to reclaim the resource that rightfully belongs to us.
Indeed the investigation was long overdue.

Initial reports of the illegal land deals were unearthed in Karoi, Mashonaland West province, where the farmers were leasing land to white former commercial farmers for a fee.
When this paper reported on the illegal land deals several months ago, no action was taken and the feeling among many people then was that the practice was permitted.
We are encouraged by the stance the President has taken to institute investigations into the matter.

We have no doubt that the reports are true and we would want to see the culprits brought to book to serve as a lesson to others who may escape the investigations.
By leasing the land to the same people we took it away from we are unfortunately sending the wrong signals to the world of our ability to productively use the farms.
We are also telling those that have been fiercely opposed to land reform that our agriculture is doomed without the white former commercial farmers.

We thus call upon the Government, upon completion of the investigation, to name and shame the culprits and take away the farms from them.
We are convinced that there are many people out there who have the capacity and resources to productively use the land without leaning on white former commercial farmers for help.
It is such people who deserve to be allocated the farms and let those that have been engaged in illegal deals with white former farmers work as farm managers for the new beneficiaries.

As a matter of fact, farmers who are leasing land would do better working on the farms as farm managers rather than as landholders.
They have proved beyond all reasonable doubt that they have no capacity to stand on their own by letting the white former farmers bring everything for production.
Given this scenario, we urge authorities not to pay lip service to the investigations but to move the failed farmers off the land.

Every citizen with the capacity to use the land productively should be given the opportunity to do so as all citizens have the right to land.
But we offer no sympathy at all for those that abuse the right to land by entering in illegal deals that put our land reform programme into disrepute.

Engaging in land deals with the white former farmers is a clear admission of failure and such people should lose the land without the blink of an eye.
Farmers who have failed should simply own up and move to smaller and manageable pieces of land and let those that are resourced occupy big farms.
We have seen that most farmers that are leasing farms are on land for which they have inadequate resources.

The fear of a land audit to ascertain whether or not beneficiaries of land reform were productively using the land has also pushed some people into illegal practices.
The Government has made it clear it will repossess any land lying idle, and as a result some farmers have gone into illegal land deals with white former farmers to avoid losing the land.

Still that doesn’t right a wrong as on allocation the beneficiaries made an undertaking of their ability to produce on the farms, and even crafted very impressive cashflow projections that made it difficult for the Government to deny them land.
We expect to see the real land beneficiaries working and producing on the farms, using their own resources but not in illegal partnership with those that we fought against yesterday for the resource.

We remain very optimistic that results of the investigations will be made public so that everyone knows who the real enemy of land reform is.