Freedom Mazwi1 & George Mudimu2
- University of Zambia
- Collective of Agrarian Scholar- Activists from the Global South (CASAS)
Introduction
On the 8th of October 2024 the Zimbabwean state announced plans to issue private title on land held by Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP) land beneficiaries. The announcement was met with excitement by certain analysts, civil society and political actors from across the political divide. This intervention is aimed at examining policy implications and to offer policy alternatives on the proposed ‘private title’.
Many analysts see the issuance of private title as way to unlock the value of land. This position is largely derived from Hernando de Soto, a Peruvian economist, who argued that while assets such as land can be leveraged on the market, they often lack formal legal documentation rendering them “dead capital”. Therefore, the Zimbabwean state position is based on the perception that the issuance of private title to land will render it ‘living capital.In this intervention as, has been argued in several other countries in the global South, we argue that such a position lacks on many fronts as it negates the history and context of Zimbabwe in relation to the land question. We posit that while freehold tenure thrives in several countries in the global North, it’s not a solution for several countries in the global south especially African countries. Private tenure which is embedded in property rights is a western concept with strong ties to the Roman-Dutch law and John Locke’s Two Treatise of Government in 1689. Private property rights aka Freehold was weaponized to expropriate land from native Africans during colonialism. Through the freehold mechanism, white minority economic and political interests were entrenched, which fostered and entrenched, inequalities and unequal development within African colonial states.Therefore, ongoing attempts to privatize land go against genuine calls for decolonizing land tenure systems that are increasingly gaining momentum among progressive political and intellectual circles. The next section provides a background of Zimbabwe’s land reforms and changing tenure systems.
Zimbabwe’s Land Reforms & Tenure Systems: A Brief Overview
Blacks in colonial Rhodesia experienced massive land alienations with the white settler population benefitting and being settled on fertile large-scale commercial farms (Moyo 1995). This laid a basis for an armed liberation struggle thus culminating in the attainment of independence in 1980. At independence, the postcolonial state inherited a bi-modal tenure agrarian structure mainly composed of freehold tile held by white-large scale commercial farmers on one hand, and customary tenure held by black confined to Communal Areas (Moyo 1995). With agricultural production being generally stable from 1980 to 1999 many analysts attributed this to white large-scale commercial farmers’ “capacity” and ingenuity while some acknowledged their ability to access credit from private commercial banks. The late Professor Sam Moyo, however, pointed out that food security during this phase was largely driven by the resilience of underfunded black communal farmers. The ability to access commercial loans by white commercial farmers using freehold title is part of the reasons why many believe that recent policy pronouncements on tenure reforms can improve access to agrarian finance. From 2000, Zimbabwe initiated a radical Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP) which apart from transferring land held by white commercial farmers to landless and land short peasants also challenged property rights by dismantling freehold tenure and replacing it with state based tenure (Moyo and Chambati 2013).In response, international capital went on strike (ibid), and the country was placed on economic sanctions leading to major declines in agricultural credit and production volumes (Moyo and Nyoni 2013; Binswanger-Mkhize and Moyo 2012). These responses by global capital and hegemonic forces were aimed at discouraging other countries from embarking on a similar radical land reform path. And this to an extent has been witnessed by several stalled expropriation without compensation demands for land in South Africa, Namibia among many other African countries with serious land questions. The economic hardships that the country had to endure over the past two decades is partly attributable to international isolation although we must be quick to point out that other internal dynamics were also at fault. We have attended to these internal dynamics in our previous discussions (Mazwi and Mudimu, 2019).
With polarity escalating emanating from the land reform, the state maintained that the land reform was irreversible and legislated state-based tenure (A1 permits and 99-year leases) which cannot transacted on markets to forestall land sales. However, by 2017 it was becoming increasingly clear policy shifts were underway (Mazwi and Mudimu 2019). Joint ventures between black resettled farmers and former white large-scale commercial farmers as well as land rentals were now actively being promoted by the state among many other forms of partnerships (see Mazwi 2022; Mudimu etal 2021). This reflected the limitations of radical land reforms in a neoliberal era and was largely unsurprising given international financiers, right wing intellectuals and civil society were at the forefront in discouraging state-base tenure and other forms of support for resettled farmers by the state. To some extent, the state capitulated to such forces although it must be stated that some voices internally as represented by the veterans of the liberation struggle have raised their voices against such maneuvers. Economic liberalization was offered in the agrarian sector and this had to be led by the private sector on the backdrop of liberalizing land tenure systems and minimum state support to the resettled farmers as well as to abandon state support for farmers in favour of a private sector led agricultural pathway.
Zimbabwe has various forms of land tenure. Rukuni (2012) sums up the major forms of land tenure in Zimbabwe as follows:
- Freehold (also known as private holding for large scale commercial farmers and some small scale
- Short term leases
- 99-year lease A2
- Offer letter A1
- Customary tenure;
Closely linked to the forms of tenure is what is termed the basket of rights (Rukuni, 2012). The rights basket is:
- Use rights; permission to grow crops, trees and make permanent improvements such as housing.
- Transfer rights; sell, give, lease, rent.
- Exclusion rights, exclude others from using or transfer
- Enforcement; legal judicial or institutional provision to guarantee exclusivity and resolve disputes.
In the next section we discuss the implications of liberalizing tenure systems.
Land Privatization Implications: Lessons from Africa
Proponents of freehold argue that it enables farmers to access agricultural credit and also stimulates agricultural investments. Such proponents include multilateral institutions, scholars, and African policy makers who have been advancing privatization of tenure. To date, over two dozen African countries have proposed de jure land law reforms that are extending the possibility of access to formal freehold land tenure to millions of poor households (Ali et al 2014:1). Notable examples include Zambia in 1995, Uganda in 1998, Côte d’Ivoire in 1998 and 2015, Malawi in 2002, Kenya in 2012, Mozambique in 1997 and 2007 and Tanzania in 1999 and 2015. The objectives explicitly aim to clear the way for full privatisation and commoditization of farmland. Based on experiences from other African countries that have privatized peasant farmers land in attempt to boost agricultural investments we contend that Harare’s attempt to introduce freehold tenure is very much unlikely to enable access to agricultural loans. Research has shown that peasant farmers in countries such as Namibia, Ghana and Kenya have faced difficulties to access loans from banks even with their land having been privatized. In Kenya, Issa Shivji demonstrates uneasy relations between financial institutions and peasants. In an interview with Marc Wuyts, Issa Shivji notes;
Or, as happened in Kenya, the Banks cannot enforce foreclosure simply because the bailiffs would be chased away by spear-wielding peasants or, as happens more often, they find the situation on the ground to be very different from that in the land registry (Wuyts and Shivji 2008).
These observations reveal the complexities and intricacies surrounding the land individualization and titling. Establishing a land register is an expensive process and countries that have tried to privatize land have found it difficult to establish a credible register. For Zimbabwe, this is likely to be a mammoth task considering the shambolic nature of the Land and Information Management System (LIMS) (Moyo and Maguranyanga 2014). There are also other pressing developmental challenges such as health, education, infrastructure and industrialization that remain priorities ahead of the individualization of title.
Elsewhere, we have presented compelling evidence using Zimbabwe’s experiences challenging conventional ‘wisdom’ on the nexus between agricultural financing and tenure systems (see Mazwi 2022). The scramble to finance FTLRP land beneficiaries whose tenure relations are mediated through the state in crop commodities such as tobacco and sugar is indicative of how global demand on markets tends to shape access to finance by peasants and not necessarily the land tenure regime. Arrangements such as contract farming and joint ventures are formats used by international capital to finance production post 2000, and although they tend to be characterised by unequal power balances and exploitation in favour of capital, they have proceeded successfully without the ‘private’ tenure in place. A similar pattern is also reflected in other countries like Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Ghana where international capital is in partnership with the peasantry on lands held under customary tenure for export oriented crops (see Martiniello 2024; Sulle 2016; Torvikey et al 2016). All this shows that profits are a major motivating factor ahead of tenure form in agricultural partnerships in contemporary times.
Growing evidence suggests privatization of tenure leads to land concentration and alienation (see Moyo 2007; Moyo 2016; Chambati, Mazwi & Mberi 2017; Martiniello 2017; Tsikata et al 2014; Shivji 2023). This occurs when capital (foreign and domestic) in alliance with local elites consolidate landholdings and encroach into lands held by poor peasants taking advantage of farmers who are in most cases precarious due to limited state support and therefore vulnerable to land concentration by capital. Overall, land sales are attributable to distress sales, economic recession, bad harvest, illness or death in the family, or calamity, and through mortgage default. In the United States, and much of Europe the absence of explicit market restraints against foreclosure and eviction safeguarding the homes and property of the poor leads to massive land consolidation by capital (Boone, 2018). By naturemarkets offer many chances for opportunistic behavior, and tend to favour strong market actors, that is, those with the capital, know-how, and information to protect and expand their property rights, and to buffer themselves against risk (ibid). The late Professor Sam Moyo in his work on the impacts of neoliberalism noted the presence of land concentration in postcolonial Africa (see Moyo 2007). He observed that with the individualization of tenure under Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) policies, the amount held by small-scale farmers was on a decline at a continental scale, while land held by foreign entities and domestic capitalists was increasing leading to massive land inequities (see Moyo 2016).In Uganda, Martiniello (2017) shows how landholdings by small-scale sugar outgrowers were decimated by local elites with financial means at Kakira works sugar plantations. A similar phenomenon is also observed in Mozambique among sugar out growers driven were land sales are on the increase (Chambati, Mazwi & Mberi 2017).
These land transactions perpetuate hunger and poverty with women and children being the worst affected (Mazwi etal 2022). Evidence suggests that it is mainly males who sell the land without consulting their female spouses and rest of family members. The impact on women is likely to be worse for Zimbabwe where research shows that about 80 percent of the plots were registered in the names of males (Moyo et al 2009). Resulting from land sales, small-scale farmers end up selling their labour to neighboring farmers, a livelihood strategy which does not guarantee enough income for self-sustenance. The land sales also leave generational poverty on the shoulders of children of poor small-scale farmers. Issa Shivji notes that much of the political violence that was witnessed post-2007 in Kenyan elections was intricately linked to land inequalities, exacerbated by the privatization of land. Given the foregoing, it is imperative to consider the potential socio-economic and political ramifications of the intended policy of privatizing resettlement land. In the following section we consider some policy options.
Policy Options
This intervention also acknowledges the challenges associated with the current state- based tenure in Zimbabwe. One key challenge has been allocating the central state great powers with regards to land control and ownership thus leaving land beneficiaries very uncertain about the security of tenure. The intensification of land evictions since 2017 at the behest of capital and politically powerful elements within the state is one manifestation of the central state either failing to control the situation or the system becoming open to abuse. Looking from a different perspective the obtaining situation leaves various stakeholders who include financial institutions, development partners and farmers with little confidence in the tenure system. Without thinking or considering the privatization of tenure, a number of options that bring confidence in the land and agriculture sector need to be considered.
- 1 Devolving Land Management from the Central State to the Zimbabwe Land Commission.
It is our view that land management and administration must move away from the central state to an already established constitutional body mandated to deal with land affairs known as the Zimbabwe Land Commission (ZLC). The Zimbabwe Land Commission must be given autonomy like other constitutional bodies such as the Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission and the Zimbabwe Gender Commission. For purposes of accountability the Zimbabwe Land Commission (ZLC) must be accountable to parliament. The commission must be provided with human and financial resources to manage the Land and Information Management System which must be audited and made to a wider public and financial institutions for purposes of transparency and accountability. The institution must be decentralized up to the district level so as to capture the most reliable information. Government institutions such as the Ministry of Lands, Ministry of Local Government, traditional authorities and civil society organizations can constitute advisory committees that can be established up to the district level.
- 2 99-Year Lease Documents as a form of Tenure
The dangers of privatizing tenure are not worth pursuing as argued in the previous sections. There is a social, economic and political prize to be paid by individualizing tenure. We have also shown that the financial benefits are often exaggerated by international financial institutions and neoliberal analysts. The issuance of freehold title is also not consistent with decoloniality which the FTLRP was all about. Mamdani (2008) concretely elaborated that the FTLRP symbolized a decoloniality project to complete the unfinished business of the liberation struggle. We see 99- year lease documents managed by a semi-autonomous Zimbabwe Land Commission as the best possible form of tenure for middle- to large scale A2 farms. A1 farmers can be granted A1 permits which will still be managed by the Zimbabwe Land Commission. The administration of these documents by the ZLC will go a long way in building certainty and confidence in the land and agrarian sector.
- 3 Joint Ventures Partnerships
To boost levels of investment and agricultural production on farms, joint venture partnerships between farmers and capital must remain permissible. These ventures must be approved by the Zimbabwe Land Commission and must protect small scale producers especially in the face of unpredictable global market changes
- 4 State Agrarian Support
The state must provide agrarian support to land reform beneficiaries on friendly terms and not pursue pseudo inputs schemes. This agrarian support must embrace technology and mechanization programs.
- 5 Participative Decision Making
The move to unilaterally privatize landholdings in land reform areas demonstrates minimal or low consultation with wider stakeholder including grassroots farmer organizations. As a way forward it will be imperative that the state does serious and democratic consultations with all stakeholders especially land reform beneficiaries.
- 6 Endogenous Development
The Zimbabwean state, in as much as the world is now globalized there is an urgent need for it to pursue homegrown economic solutions that place the poor and marginalized communities at the center of development processes. The neoliberal inclined policies that regard external actors as experts and technocrats therefore they know best has failed especially when it comes to issues of land tenure in Zimbabwe.
References
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