Zimbabweans should be free to settle wherever they want because this is our country, a Member of Parliament said in apparent reference to sentiments by Musikavanhu legislator Prosper Mutseyami that people should be resettled close to their traditional areas.
Mutseyami said he was against the idea of people from Chipinge being resettled in Mashonaland East or Zezurus taking over land in Chipinge which was an area for the Ndau.
“I am pleading with the people of Zimbabwe, be patriotic, be in love with the place where you were born. However, we realised that we have people of the Ndau origin being resettled in Mashonaland East, being removed from the people of their area,” he said.
In her contribution to the Land Commission Bill Lilian Zemura said she saw nothing wrong with people being moved from Matebeleland to Mashonaland or from Mashonaland to the Ndau land.
“Zimbabwe is one and you can stay wherever you want because this is our country,” she said.
Zemura also said while there was need to regularise the land issue, people should not be dispossessed of their land so that it can be passed on to those who were opposed to the land reform programme when it was introduced describing it as a political gimmick.
Those who were offered their land properly should e allowed to settle regardless of how many members of a family benefitted.
“If we have people of the Zemura family who applied regardless of how many they were and benefited, they should keep their land. We have some Members of Parliament who have said we have some people of the extended families who benefited. I am saying there was nothing wrong with that because they benefited because they applied and got the land because we have a saying that the early bird catches the fattest worm….
“When this land was being allocated in early 2000, I advised my grown up children to go and apply for land and my children listened to me and they applied and they are beneficiaries of the land distribution exercise because it was being given and allocated to beneficiaries who were 18 years and above.”
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