The Sunday News
Judith Phiri, Business Reporter
THE customary tenure system in peri-urban communal areas is an obstacle hindering women from accessing and holding land use and other property rights, an academic has said.
According to the World Bank in more than 30 countries women and girls do not have the same rights to own or inherit land as men and boys, while in dozens of others, customs undermine women’s rights to land and property. Statistics show that tenure insecurity constrains opportunity for more than one billion urban and rural women globally.
Speaking during a policy dialogue hosted by Transparency International Zimbabwe (TIZ), academic and development practitioner, Dr Wayne Malinga from Lupane State University (LSU) said Zimbabwe had four main systems of land tenure and among them, women were struggling to access land.
“These are freehold land (private), State land, communal, and leasehold resettlement systems. Inadequately planned, incompletely serviced and often not fully recognised dense settlements have emerged in peri-urban and urban areas. The ‘new’ urban settlements are characterised by lack of basic infrastructure and services, as well as serious tenure insecurity. The struggles of women to access and hold land use and other land property rights under the customary tenure system in peri-urban communal areas is increasingly becoming a cause for concern,” said Dr Malinga.
He said most straddle local authority boundaries were creating jurisdictional challenges regarding the cycle of planning, development, management and regulation, while the challenges have affected regulatory functions and service delivery.
Dr Malinga said at both national and local Government levels, emergent settlements were neglected spaces and this neglect forces residents to improvise in terms of housing development and fulfilling other basic needs resulting in growth of illegal settlements and slums.
In terms of transparency, accountability and integrity in administrating land with a focus on the rise of private land developers, Dr Malinga said:
“Private developers get subdivision permits from the city council and develop private neighbourhoods commonly in low, medium and high density suburbs. There is inflation of the prices of stands by land developers as they are motivated by quick profits at the expense of prospective home and land owners.”
He said buying a stand from a land developer could cost twice or more than the price charged by local authority, while they also leave the development unfinished, forcing landowners to pay twice for the same work.
Dr Malinga said there was no concrete law defining a private developer and the Zimbabwe Land Developers Association should be tasked with the mandate of overseeing the registration and operations of land developers.
“There is no follow-up mechanism by the local authority on land developers who buy land from them, hence there should be the enactment of the Land Development Bill into an Act.
“Most private land developers fail to deliver on their promises, for example the case of Pelandaba West where there is no water and sewer systems. There are also unserviced stands in Selborne Brooke and Trenance suburb as some land developers do not have adequate resources to finish developing the land so that residents are not left stranded,” he said.
In order to map a way forward, Dr Malinga said there was a need for transparency, accountability and integrity to be instituted among land developers as a check and balance mechanism. The policy dialogue was held under the theme: “Uprooting Corruption: Lessons, Experiences and Pathways in Land Administration.”
