Carte blanche for land grabs

2005-05-31 21:34

Harare - Zimbabwe will amend its constitution to allow the state to seize land and claim full ownership without having to deal with court challenges, the lands minister said on Tuesday.

Didymus Mutasa told AFP that the proposed amendment would allow the state to immediately become the owner of farmland once a property had been "designated" for expropriation.

"The problem with our land reform process currently is that people can object to it and go to court, not that they want the land back, but just to frustrate the programme," he told AFP in an interview.

"Now we want to stop that frustration by simply saying once any land has been designated, that land immediately reverts to ownership by the state."

"Once that land belongs to the state, the state can do what it wants with it, it can pass on that ownership to someone else, and in this case that someone will be a new landowner ... on the basis of a lease we hope will run for 99 years," Mutasa said.

Thousands of white Zimbabwean farmers who lost their land over the past five years have gone to court to try and have their evictions overturned but without much success.

In January, the country's administrative court started going through more than 5 000 land cases, which a representative of white farmers, Mike Clarke, described as their bid against the "attempt to legitimise an illegal process".

The legal process is likely to be overtaken by the constitutional reforms which Mutasa said government wants tabled "as soon as possible" when parliament reconvenes on June 9.

Mutasa said farmers whose land was not earmarked for seizure would retain titles to their properties.

- AFP