No EU farm aid ... until land audit

Written by Never Chanda

Friday, 30 July 2010 19:41

HARARE – The European Union has ruled out supporting newly resettled farmers until the Zimbabwe government carries out a long-delayed audit to eliminate multiple farm owners.

A senior EU official told The Zimbabwean On Sunday that the land audit would clarify a “number of issues that are necessary to commit to all farmers in Zimbabwe”. “Until the land audit is completed, we cannot support,” said Joost Bakkeren, EU Food Attaché in Zimbabwe.

He said the EU and the United Nations Development Programme were ready to assist Zimbabwe implement the land audit. Zimbabwe’s coalition government promised fresh land reforms that are more orderly when it was formed in February 2009 but to date has failed to carry out a land audit that is critical to any programme to rectify the damage caused by President Robert Mugabe’s chaotic and often violent farm redistribution programme.

The administration has also failed to stop Mugabe’s supporters in the
army and from his Zanu (PF) party from seizing more land from the
country’s few remaining white commercial farmers.

Land remains a divisive issue in Zimbabwe after Mugabe over the past
decade drove most of the country’s about 4 500 large-scale white
landowners off their farms which he went on to parcel out to blacks in
a chaotic and often violent land reform programme that destroyed
commercial agriculture to leave the country facing food shortages.

In addition critics say Mugabe’s cronies – and not ordinary black
peasants – benefited the most from the land reforms with many ending
up with up to six farms each against the government’s publicly stated
one-man-one-farm policy.

Mugabe has admitted mistakes in his land reforms but has often
rejected calls especially by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC-T
for a review of the land redistribution programme, saying those behind
the calls want to return expropriated farms to their white former
owners.

The 2008 political agreement between the two MDC formations and Zanu
(PF) that led to formation of the Harare power-sharing government
calls for a land audit to establish who owns which land in Zimbabwe in
order to eliminate multiple land owners.

But the audit has failed to take off because of a shortage of funds
and resistance from senior Zanu (PF) officials who are multiple farm
owners.

Zanu (PF) hardliners and members of the pro-Mugabe security forces
have also continued seizing more land from the few remaining white
farmers in breach of the inter-party political agreement as well as a
ruling by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Tribunal
that called for an end to farm seizures.

Mugabe, who wields the most power in the unity government with
Tsvangirai, has said Zimbabwe will not abide by the Tribunal ruling
despite Harare being required to do so under the SADC Treaty.

In an apparent attempt to depoliticise the land question, the MDC-T
has called for the establishment of an independent commission that
would be given powers to administer legislation pertaining to land.

The commission would also be tasked to ensure transparency, equity and
fairness in land acquisition and resettlement procedures as well as
examine legislation and make recommendations to the government and
Parliament for a national policy on the tenure, acquisition, use and
distribution of land.

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