The Sunday News
Vincent Gono, Features Editor
SCORES of people who have been irregularly settled on farms without requisite documents are facing eviction as the Government moves to restore order, eliminate corrupt tendencies and ensure maximum land utilisation.
In an interview on Thursday, Lands, Agriculture, Water, Climate and Rural Resettlement Deputy Minister Douglas Karoro said illegally resettled farmers and families that have no offer letters for pieces of land that they were occupying were the ones affected by the evictions. He said the programme was painful but necessary.
“We have people who have either resettled themselves or have been resettled by chiefs, headmen and village heads, some after paying bribes or whatever they call it, those people that hold no offer letters from the Ministry of Lands, those are the ones that are facing eviction. We want people to follow the law, so all those without offer letters are being given eviction orders and the process is not confined to a particular province or district, it’s a national programme,” he said.
The Deputy Minister said there were certain people who had stayed on the land for more than 10 years, adding that the number of years one stays on an illegality does not right the wrong.
“The idea is not to make people stranded as has been said. We are not insensitive to the plight of our landless brothers and sisters, we are saying the idea of sitting where people want just like mushrooms does not promote orderly resettlements. The land audit, it is hoped, will open more space as those with multiple farms are going to be exposed and made to surrender some of the farms. Those are the farms that we are going to resettle our people legally,” he said.
He added that chiefs and other traditional leaders should desist from making people pay for land in resettlement areas as those settlements would have been planned. He said those that were being evicted were going to where they came from as Government was looking at getting them land for regular settlements.
The programme has left a number of families homeless in some pockets of the country where the audit has exposed a lot of irregularities that stifle proper utilisation of land.
In Umguza, just outside Bulawayo, more than 200 families at Stoncroft Farm were evicted despite having stayed at the farm for the past decade while in Chiredzi more than 2 000 families were evicted for being squatters on gazetted land.
Deputy Minister Karoro said the evictions were ongoing and were a result of the countrywide audit of farms by the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Water, Climate and Rural Resettlement targeting idle land and multiple farm ownership.
He, however, said not all was gloomy in the farm audit as in some provinces and districts there was regular settlements where people followed the law.
