OPPOSITION Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) Secretary-General Chalton Hwende has called on for another land revolution to benefit the youths, saying land is their inheritance.
This time, Hwende wants the land grabbed from ZANU PF chefs who he says are underutilising them.
A tale of missed opportunities
Hwende says many young people missed out on the rather chaotic land redistribution programme of the early 2000s and they now needed the farms to fight unemployment. Currently, most youths engaged in farming are linked to the ruling Zanu-PF party.
But Hwende, in a message on social media, decried missed opportunities. He said authorities needed to find underutilized land for the youths of today.
“We need to free 1 million ha of arable land currently being under utilized by the ZANU-PF chefs and distribute 10 ha plots to 100 000 youths in Zimbabwe.
“Land and Jobs are the 2 major issues that will uplift the people of this country. Another land revolution is the only solution,” Hwende said.
Land is our heritage, says Hwende
He urged youths to identify farms being underutilized by ruling party leaders and earmark them for redistribution under a CCC government.
“Young people let’s list here farms occupied by people with over 200Ha who are under utilizing the land. We want the youths to be given 1 million ha to divide among 100 000 young people who are ready to make their 10 ha productive. Nyika nevhu inhaka yatakasiirwa nemadzitateguru, (land is our heritage),” Hwende said.
The CCC came out of the original MDC led by Morgan Tsvangirai, which fought against land redistribution as its funders were mainly white commercial farmers. At that time, Tsvangirai said the land reform was chaotic and violent, and urged party members not to partake.
“It is not land reform when you take land from a few whites and give it to a few blacks,” Tsvangirai argued, adding that property rights was more important than taking back the farms. But Robert Mugabe’s Zanu PF, under panic and in fear of losing elections, went ahead and took the farms by force to excite its support base.
“Zimbabwe used to be the bread basket of Africa until wanton politicians destroyed the noble land redistribution programme. During the 1990s, Zimbabwe was a nett exporter of agricultural products, which was the biggest earner of foreign currency,” Tsvangirai argued.
“No sane investor will put their money into a country where property rights are not secure,” he said. “Constitutionality and the rule of law must be the basic norms for land redistribution”.
No reverse on the farm grabs
In his inaugural address in 2017, President Emmerson Mnangagwa confirmed that land reform was both historically necessary and irreversible. He also made a commitment to compensate farmers who were forced off their land during the fast track land reform programme of the 2000s.
The argument whether land grabs would be reversed was settled by the 2013 Constitution, negotiated by all political parties which made it clear that there would be no reversal.
Zimbabwe’s major land reform, starting in the year 2000, resulted in around 6,000 farms owned by about 4,500 farmers and companies being taken over. Former owners, most of them white commercial farmers, were evicted, sometimes violently.
Meanwhile, in the turn of the millennium, ZANU-PF led a land revolution which saw commercial farmers mainly whites having their farms taken.
Today around 145,000 households occupy 4.1 million hectares under smallholder resettlement schemes. Another 3.5 million hectares are used by about 23,000 medium-scale farmers.
Apparently, most of these farms are being underutilized and many connected persons have multiple farms.
Agriculture remains a mainstay of Zimbabwe’s economy. People on the resettlement farms are producing significant quantities of food and other agricultural products. Every year, over half of the average 2.2 million tonnes of maize produced in the country, as well as 60% of total tobacco output worth nearly USD$350 million, comes from land reform areas.
These numbers make it clear how vital they are to Zimbabwe’s struggling economy.
