ZANU PF’S LAND SALE PLAN IS MADNESS, CORRUPTION AND A CRIME

The Zimbabwean government has announced a new policy. It will now allow Black Zimbabweans who got farmland for free to sell that land to other Black Zimbabweans who never got land. This is shocking. It is not only foolish. It is criminal.

Imagine this: One person gets land for free, then sells it for a profit, and the one who never got land is now expected to pay for it. This is madness. It means the people who grabbed land for nothing are now going to be paid for it — by other poor Zimbabweans.

This policy is not just bad economics. It is theft. It is also a cover-up to help the ZANU PF elite make billions of dollars from land they looted during the land invasions after 2000.

Let’s be clear. That land is still contested. Former white farmers who were pushed out still hold title. The title deed, called a deed of cession, is the legal proof of ownership. This deed has not been signed by the white farmers because the Zimbabwean government has not fully paid them. In 2018, Mnangagwa promised to pay compensation. But up to now, most of that promise has not been fulfilled.

So how can anyone sell land when the title is not clear? Anyone buying this land is wasting their money. That land can still be taken back. This has happened many times before. It happened in Uganda. In the 1970s, Idi Amin gave businesses owned by Asians to his friends. They even tried to sell them to each other. But later, Uganda had to return the businesses or pay compensation. No serious investor would touch them.

This is why the idea of selling looted land is dangerous. The land should belong to the government. Anyone who wants to farm should lease it or buy it from the government, not from people who got it for free.

Right now, we are seeing ZANU PF leaders trying to sell the many farms they grabbed. Many of these farms are idle. They were taken not to farm, but to own and loot. This new law is a plan to clean the theft by legalising the sale of stolen land.

But this plan will fail. Why? Because the world has no confidence in anything ZANU PF says. Zimbabwe has already used six currencies since the economy collapsed. Nobody trusts ZANU PF with land either. Even a 99-year lease would have worked if they had honoured it. But ZANU PF kept invading farms and chasing people away. So now, no one feels safe to invest in farming. Unless you are in ZANU PF, you can lose your farm at any time.

Mnangagwa says he is paying 94 white farmers US$20 million as part of compensation. But he left out 4,500 other farmers whose deeds are also contested. Most of those 94 are Dutch, and only covered under the Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (BIPPA). What about the 650 Black farmers who also lost farms in ZANU PF’s fast-track land program? They were promised land back under Statutory Instrument 62 of 2020, but never got it.

How can this land be sold when the legal status is still unclear? No land audit has been done to show who owns what, what they are producing, or what taxes they have paid. The idea of selling land only works if the ownership is clear. There must also be deals with banks. But right now, ZANU PF wants to do this alone, without any plan.

This is not land reform. It is looting.

How do you get free land, free fuel, free inputs, free tractors, and then demand the taxpayer pays the former owners, while you get to sell the land? This is economic madness. Only a criminal mind can support this policy.

This land sale policy is dangerous. It must be REJECTED.