Zimbabwe overhauls land policy to improve credit rating

Twenty-five years after embarking on chaotic agrarian reforms, Zimbabwe has made a major shift in its land policy in a bid to improve its standing with creditors.

The new change means that beneficiaries of land controversially seized from whites will be able to sell it.

Thousands of indigenous people took over white-owned commercial farms after the late long-time ruler Robert Mugabe launched the often violent land reform programme in 2000.

About 4,500 white Zimbabweans were forcibly removed from their farms, often by violence, by gangs led by veterans of Zimbabwe's 1970s war of independence.

Mr Mugabe's government argued at the time that it was correcting a colonial imbalance that left the white minority owning most of the country's productive land while the black majority remained landless.

However, the new farmers were not allowed to sell or transfer ownership of the land, which was essentially owned by the state.

As a result, banks were reluctant to lend to the resettled farmers because they could not use their land as collateral, and this had a huge impact on Zimbabwe's agricultural industry.

The land seizures were largely blamed for the collapse of the country's agricultural economy and its international isolation.

Food production also plummeted, leaving the majority of the country's population heavily dependent on donors.

Frequent droughts, blamed on climate change, have exacerbated food insecurity in the country of 16 million people.

Now, five years after Mr Mugabe's death, his successor, President Emmerson Mnangagwa, is implementing a new land policy, largely imposed by Western creditors who have made agrarian reform one of the preconditions for much-needed debt restructuring talks.

Zimbabwe, which is saddled with more than $21 billion in debt, has brought in African Development Bank (AfDB) president Akinwumi Adesina, to lead a process that aims to clear $6 billion of external debt arrears.

The first major policy shift that was influenced by the AfDB process happened a year after Mr Mugabe’s death in 2019, when the government agreed to pay $3.5 billion in compensation to local white farmers who lost their land.

Foreign white farmers were also allowed to apply for the return of their seized land.

On December 20, President Mnangagwa unveiled the new land tenure policy, which will see land ownership transferred only between "indigenous Zimbabweans".

At the launch at the 82-year-old ruler's farm near the town of Kwekwe, some 215 kilometres from Harare, a handful of farmers, including the president himself, received title deeds to the farms they occupy.

President Mnangagwa said secure tenure meant "our farmers can access credit facilities" and that it would "lift many out of poverty and into prosperity".

Ian Scoones, an expert on Zimbabwe's agricultural systems and a professional fellow at the Institute of Development Studies in the UK, said land privatisation was not the solution to the country's land tenure problems.

“The problem is that nearly 25 years after land reform, there is still confusion over tenure rights,” Dr Scoones wrote on his blog, Zimboland.

“Instead of changing the land tenure regime, a focus on boosting the capacity of basic land administration is essential, and long overdue.

“Before rushing into a new set of tenure arrangements based on vague, politically driven announcements, more reflection and deliberation on what makes sense in Zimbabwe is urgently needed.”

He said one of the mistakes Zimbabwe made when it embarked on the land reform programme was to give the state control and ownership, leaving beneficiaries uncertain about security of tenure.

After President Mnangagwa came to power following the coup that toppled Mr Mugabe in 2017, thousands of beneficiaries of the land reform programme were evicted by the government in unclear circumstances.

READ: US slaps sanctions on Zimbabwe leadership, citing abuses

“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,” Dr Scoones said.

Freedom Mazwi, an agricultural expert from the University of Zambia, said the change in Zimbabwe's land tenure policy was expected because the radical nature of the policy challenged powerful global forces.

Dr Mazwi said the southern African country found itself isolated by the West because its approach challenged established norms on issues such as property rights.

“When the country conducted its land reform, the process was too radical and it challenged neo-liberal norms like those on property rights, which are espoused by powerful forces such as the United States, European Union, World Bank and International Monetary Fund,” he said.

“Once you challenge those property rights, it means that you get isolated. And when you are isolated, you feel the pinch.

“You are then forced to negotiate your way back, and that is the process that Zimbabwe has found itself in.”

At the turn of the millennium, the US and EU, as well as countries such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand, imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe, citing alleged human rights abuses and electoral fraud under Mr Mugabe’s rule.

Zimbabwe has maintained that it is being punished for repossessing land from the white minority population for redistribution to landless blacks.

Dr Mazwi said the architects of the land reform programme were ignorant of the global context that the country would need external money to fund agriculture and markets for its produce, which are largely in the West.

“You need to ensure that there is food self-sufficiency in the country... Zimbabwe used to export horticulture products to Europe and it was second only to Kenya,” he said.

“After that squeeze, Zimbabwe has to negotiate its way back into the global world order and one of the ways is through the platform that has been organised by the African Development Bank for the country to repay its creditors.

“Some of the conditions in that process are that Zimbabwe must address its land tenure system and governance issues.”

The new land tenure policy and compensation for white farmers is a form of capitulation by a government under pressure from ballooning foreign debt and an unrelenting economic crisis, Dr Mazwi said.

“Addressing the issue of property rights means compensating the white commercial farmers and reverting to title deeds or freehold property rights, which are being introduced,” he said.

“So this is a capitulation because the global system could not allow any radicalised situations such as the manner in which the land reform was conducted in Zimbabwe.”

For the past two years, Zimbabwe has been talking to creditors about a deal to restructure its debt in exchange for economic and governance reforms.

The talks, stalled by concerns over the pace of Harare's reforms, gained momentum this year after the start of compensation payments to white farmers and the recent shift in land tenure policy.

Among the reforms Zimbabwe has committed to as part of the AfDB-led process are compensating dispossessed white farmers for improvements to their land, compensating farmers who held land protected by bilateral investment protection agreements, and granting titles to new land owners.