What the people said about the proposed land Commission Bill

2.    Background to the Land Question in Zimbabwe

Land conflicts in Zimbabwe began in 1893, through an uprising, after the Ndebele kingdom had been dispossessed of its land and relocated to Gwaai and Shangani reserves. The First and Second Chimurenga were launched by the black majority who sought to recover their lost land.   Even after attaining independence, land remained heavily skewed in favour of the minority whites.  There was slow progress in addressing the land imbalance, due to lack of funding for the government to buy the land and transfer it to the landless majority.   As a result, there was a slowdown in the pace of land transfers in the first decade after independence.   Naturally, a lot of landless Zimbabweans were disappointed by the slow pace of land re-distributed, leading to protests and occupations in the 1990s.

In 1998, following a breakdown of negotiations  between Zimbabwe and Britain and other financiers, Government began in earnest to enact legal provisions, through amendments to the  Constitution, allowing for the compulsory acquisition of land without compensation.   The fast-track land reform programme which began in 2000, yielded positive results in that by 2010 about 11.7 million hectares owned by approximately 4 500 white commercial farmers had been reduced to 3.4 million hectares, and transferred to hundreds of thousands of landless Zimbabweans. 

It is important to note that the fast-track land reform programme  was complex and gave rise to a number of challenges such as: double allocations, occupations without offer letters, forged offer letters, boundary disputes, settlers being denied access to their plots, sharing of infrastructure, compensation of former farmers, under-utilization of land as well as vandalism and theft of equipment.  Another challenge was in the co-ordination of land allocations such variations on statistics on land beneficiaries between several institutions at district and national institutions.  It is against this background that the 2013 Constitution was inscribed with clauses calling for the establishment of a Land Commission to address these challenges.

3.    Methodology

In line with section 141 (b) of the Constitution which states that; “Parliament must ensure that interested parties are consulted about Bills being considered  by Parliament..”, the portfolio Committee on Lands, Agriculture, Mechanisation and Irrigation Development, together with the thematic Committee on Peace and Security  conducted Public Hearings in all the ten provinces of the country.  Participants at these public hearings included: representatives from farming associations, traditional leaders, women's groups, local authorities, representatives from wildlife conservancies, the youth and the elderly amongst others.

In addition, the select Committees attended a capacity building workshop on the Bill, where presentations were made by Permanent Secretary of Lands and Rural Resettlement, representatives from the Attorney General's Office, the  Centre for Applied Research and Legal Services (CARL)  and Commissioners from the Land Commission.

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