'Zim land reform must speed up'

2005-07-28 23:33

Johannesburg - If land reform does not happen fast enough people will organise themselves and force redistribution to occur, said a Zimbabwean professor on Thursday.

Prof Sam Moyo of the African Institute for Agrarian Studies said: "If the state does not move when it is challenged, it will be challenged.

"The social process leads and the state must then try contain and conduct in the correct way."

He was addressing the national land summit in Johannesburg.

The South African government was facing mounting criticism over the pace of land reform, with some groups warning of Zimbabwean-style land grabs if reform was not speeded up.

Farm invasions govt-orchestrated

Moyo said the government should adopt a structured, radical approach instead of a structured, conservative one for land reform to be productive.

People often thought the Zimbabwean farm invasions were government-orchestrated because it wanted to win the elections. In fact, the invasions had social origins.

In 1975, Zimbabwe was selected as an experiment to resolve the settler issue through reconciliation.

Moyo said that this model failed and eventually Zimbabwe was in a position where its people wanted land, but the government could not effectively deal with their wants.

This happened because of a lack of money, and the "state-centred, but market-based approach".

Willing-buyer, willing-seller

According to this model, the private sector decided what land should be sold through the market, and central government was a reactive buyer to land on offer.

Moyo said the legal and policy framework and the market concept in Zimbabwe before the massive land grabs were very similar to South Africa.

The willing-buyer, willing-seller concept was the "opposite of development" because farmers decided what land to sell, when to sell it, and what it should cost.

Moyo said: "If you want to develop people it won't happen under this approach."

He said the landless in Zimbabwe were initially given farms with poor soil, which did not help their development, leading to social tension.

Spearheading the mass invasions

There had always been a rural struggle for land in Zimbabwe. All the war veterans did in spearheading the mass invasions after 1999 was co-ordinate the struggle.

"This is a phenomenon if you have a policy framework that doesn't work."

Moyo said the Zimbabwean government had taken about two-and-a-half-years to gain control of the land invasions.

The fact remained that extensive redistribution had occurred, "unfortunately not according to the technocratic niceties".

Frans Tseehama, a permanent secretary for Land in Namibia, told the summit that the willing-buyer, willing-seller principle had also failed in his country.

Since independence in 1990, only 145 farms, about 913 488 hectares, had been redistributed in Namibia. Only 1 538 households of a waiting list of about 240 000 had been resettled.

- SAPA