President Emmerson Mnangagwa on Friday said that Zimbabwe is not a nation of angels so it is possible for someone to be mistreated by government officials but when that happens one must appeal to higher authorities.
He was responding to a question from Crispen Machingauta who said that he was brushed off by Ministry of Agriculture officials when he presented a proposal which he felt would help Zimbabwe achieve its goal of making the country an upper middle income country by 2030.
“Zimbabwe is not a population of angels,” Mnangagwa responded. “I do not think any country is. Angels are found in heaven.”
Speaking in a live interview with Capitalk Radio, Mnangagwa said it was possible that Machingauta was mistreated but if that was the case he should approach higher authorities to look at his proposal.
Mnangagwa said the land audit, which is aimed at establishing who owns what, was not yet complete but the interim report that he had received showed that some people had as many as nine farms with the former First Lady Grace Mugabe being an exception as she had more than 16 farms.
The policy, he said, was that each family should have one farm, but there were some people who had registered farms in the names of their children, one as young as two years old who reportedly had 800 hectares.
Mnangagwa said once the land audit is out, it will be released to the public so that the nation knows who owns what because land belongs to the people not to individuals.
The President blasted banks for being stuck in the colonial past as they were denying resettled farmers loans because of lack of collateral but in his opinion a 99-year lease was as good as a title deed because very few people lived beyond 99 years.
He said the government had addressed all the concerns raised by the financial institutions but they were still holding back.
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