Harare (Zimbabwe)
The Zimbabwean government will embark on a two-year
national land audit, starting next year, according to a new development
blueprint.

It is hoped that the audit would lay the groundwork for a more orderly and
equitable land redistribution programme following a decade of chaotic land
grab by supporters of President Robert Mugabe.

“The government will, during 2010, carry out the National Land Audit. This
will cover 12,000 A2 farms, 108,000 A1 farms, 56,250 old resettlement
schemes, as well as 6,000 small and large-scale commercial farms,” the
blueprint said.

Under the existing land reform programme, former large-scale farms were
converted into A1 model farms for small-scale subsistence farmers and A2
model farms for commercial medium and large scale farmers.

Old resettlement schemes refer to pieces of land allocated to subsistence
farmers before the advent of the land reform programme in 2000.

The audit would also see 4,000 A2 farms, 36,000 A1 farms, 18,750 old
resettlement schemes and 2,000 small and large-scale commercial farms coming
under scrutiny in 2011.

Zimbabwe’s power-sharing government had earlier this year shelved plans to
carry out the audit because it does not have the US$31 million needed to pay
for the exercise.

Mugabe’s programme to seize white-owned farmland for redistribution to
landless blacks is blamed for plunging once self-sufficient Zimbabwe into
food shortages after Harare failed to support black villagers resettled on
former white farms with inputs to maintain production.

The audit is expected to weed out top allies of Mugabe who grabbed most of
the best farms seized from whites, with some ending up with as many as six
farms each against the government’s stated one-man-one-farm policy.

The audit is also expected to facilitate the undertaking of an exercise that
would result in the issuance of 99-year leases to A2 farmers.

Source: APA