By Wisdom Mumera.
Zimbabwe. – (News Of The South)- Nearly 20% of farms have changed hands since the Land Reform Programme in 2000 with A2 farms recording a higher percentage as some resettled farmers have returned back to their rural areas, a recent research report says.
Zimbabweland, a local research organisation focusing on trends prevailing in the country’s agricultural sector says overally 19% of plots have changed hands over this period.
“A2 sites have the highest change recording 29% of plots changing hands followed by A1 self-contained which have seen 22% changing and A1 villagised at 15%”.
“Across all sites, 57% of these changes were due to the death of the original owner. Exits for other reasons were 30% of transfer cases in the A1 sites and 75% in the A2 sites”
According to the research findings in the A2 sector there was a particularly dramatic level of turnover, with a series of politically-motivated evictions occurring around the time of the 2008 elections.
The report laments the seeming ignoring of the District Land Committees by the farmers when changing ownership.
“Despite the fact that District Land Committees are supposed to have control over land and oversee transfers, this is less important in A1 areas, where ‘traditional’ inheritance (or ‘gifting’) arrangements generally apply on the death of plot holder”, it says.
Overall though only 8% of all plots in the sample had changed hands during this period for reasons other than death 5% in A1 sites and 22% in A2 sites.
“In our ‘fast track’ land reform sites in Masvingo, death of the original plot holder (in all cases men) was the primary reason for change in ownership in 57% of all cases”.
“In the A1 self-contained sites, death was the reason for 78% of changes, while in A1 villagised sites it was 68% and A2 it was 25%. Of the others, 28% left for other rural areas, mostly to original rural homes, although a few got new, better land in the resettlements”.
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“ The remainder left for town (8%) or were evicted (7% – the A2 cases noted above)”, the report says.
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