It is happening because without title, you have no ownership. In the rural areas, people must have title. This is the way we should go. Title brings ownership and there is no intellectual property rights, imperative investors coming into our country. They want to know what you have. Even in terms of the land reform, the failure in the land reform; as long as you have taken State land, there must be title; they must be privatised so that they have title.
The reason why the banks are not giving money is because they are saying there is no title. Everybody agrees that the land reform happened but give people title so that when they fail to pay back, the bank is able to sell that farm or repossess it and recover their money. You cannot nationalise land. Kenya has privatised land, Mozambique is privatising land and why cannot Zimbabwe privatise land? All what we want is production at the end of the day. To me, it is critical that this Land Developers Bill is certainly looked into but without us naming certain big people, we are wasting our time.
I really implore with my heart because the people in Norton belong to ZANU PF, MDC and so forth. They are suffering because there are certain heavy weights that you cannot name in your caucuses. I implore the Chief Whip from the ruling party to come hard on Ministers and so forth, they are accountable to you at the end of the day. Whatever name they have, if you want you can even invite me to your caucus and I will give you the names of the people.
It is pretty clear that when Minister Chombo was Minister of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing, he presided over this. So, for the first time, whether he differs with Minister Kasukuwere or not in terms of the land barons, he is a small boy. I repeat, Hon. Kasukuwere as Minister cannot deal with this issue because it has to be dealt with by Hon. Minister Chombo who was the Minister of Local Government for a long time. If you look back and I talk about the evidence in Norton, all these land barons in Norton were born during his tenure. And; being born during his tenure, how can you then investigate him when he is now the Minister of Home of Affairs? These policemen will go to him and say, chef I have come for you – this is the corruption which I speak emotionally that is killing this country.
There are people sitting in these offices letting the President down. They are busy parcelling land to the people, even to the First Family because they want to be in power yet people are suffering. We shall not hesitate as this Parliament to name and shame and this Land Developers’ Bill is incomplete without the Hon. Minister Chombo being investigated as the Minister who was in charge of this. By the time Hon. Kasukuwere came into this Ministry, there was no more land. Land had been finished. I speak on behalf of the people of Norton who have cried, even ZANU PF people who have cried about this. To me, it is critical that we name and shame in this last Session so that we are known to be true Members of Parliament who stood for people. We cannot have a nation which has people without title deeds. That does not work, so this certainly means that…
THE HON. DEPUTY SPEAKER: Hon. Member, I think you are left with very few minutes.
Continued next page
(439 VIEWS)