‘Reduce farm sizes in Midlands’

Harare Bureau
The Zanu-PF Midlands provincial leadership wants farm sizes for all land reform beneficiaries in the province to be reduced to a maximum of 500 hectares to accommodate hordes of people in need of land. There are indications that members of former Vice President Joice Mujuru’s cabal in the province were allegedly allocating themselves thousands of hectares, most of which is lying idle.

Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa at the weekend indicated that the government will soon start reducing the size of commercial farms.

Zanu-PF acting provincial chairperson for Midlands Cde Kizito Chivamba concurred with VP Mnangagwa saying they would take the lead in that regard.

“We’ve a lot of our people here who didn’t get land, but are desperate for it, so as the party leadership we want to make sure we reduce the size of these farms to a maximum of 500 hectares,” he said.

“We’ve some people here with more than 2,000 hectares, yet there’re others who are desperate even for one acre but can’t get it. Some of the land that some people are holding on to isn’t productive.”

Cde Chivamba said some of the political gurus in the province had less than 500 hectares, while others had more than 2,000 hectares. He said the provincial lands committee was expected to meet early next month to consider the revolutionary party’s views.

“VP Mnangagwa has about 400 hectares, the Chief Whip Cde Joram Gumbo has about 300 hectares only. Those are big people in the province, but they complied with the regulations that in Midlands beneficiaries shouldn’t have more than 500 hectares.

“Yet we’ve some politicians who want to think that they’re too big so they should have more than 2,000 hectares. We’ll be meeting as the provincial lands committee in the first or second week of February where we’re going to talk about the urgent need to reduce farm sizes.

“The meeting will be attended by the provincial administrator, district administrators, chief executive officers and chairpersons of rural district councils as well as chiefs. We want to make sure that Zimbabweans who need land can also access it, remember land doesn’t grow but the population does.”