Eddie Cross
He announced that he was going to grant freehold title to all who were building homes on State land in urban and peri-urban areas. This followed a decision to grant title to Mbare and Epworth, two of the oldest urban high-density settlements in Harare which he had launched in April 2022 after promising this in 2018.
In mid-2023, the Cabinet took the decision to widen this program to all the urban, high density housing settlements, to all state assisted housing units and rural business centers. These decisions followed a previous decision to digitalise the existing stock of titled property in the country. These decisions will, if taken together, affect over 4 million properties in urban and peri urban areas. Now, in the last month, he has extended the program to the former commercial farming Districts covering about 12 million hectares of agricultural land.
It may not be fully understood, but in this, our President has been quite systematic and determined. When he took power in 2017, following the resignation of Mr Mugabe, he gave a speech at his inauguration where he promised to try and correct some of the mistakes his predecessor had made. Two of these promises struck me – the first was that he promised to compensate the farmers who had owned and operated some 4 800 large scale commercial farms and who had been displaced by the “Fast Track Land Reform Program” launched by Mugabe in 2000. The second was a commitment to try and heal the wounds of the genocidal campaign in 1983/87 against the Ndebele people.
It has taken much longer than it should have, but these were tough decisions and very controversial. But he is following through on both – the displaced farmers have negotiated a settlement for compensation of US$3,5 billion. Nothing like full legal compensation, but it is still substantial in a country where the budget is only US$7 billion. Last week the first of these payments was made to several hundred families now stretched across the world. The Gukurahundi pledge was more difficult, but assisted by the Swiss Government, 76 Chiefs from all affected Communities are being assisted in a program to establish what actually happened and how the Chiefs can establish some sort of social justice for the many tens of thousands of affected families.
But it is the title deed program that is so revolutionary. In the western world and the older democracies, freehold title was only widely adopted in the 18th and 19th centuries. Before that rural land was held under feudal tenure and most of urban tenure was leasehold. In the USA, what set them apart was the fact that from the start of settlement, the immigrants were granted title rights. The family farms of the mid-west provided the foundation for a farm industry that even today dominates the world.
Even so, freehold title today covers less than 20 per cent of all agricultural land in the world. Many other experiments have been made – the collectivization of land in the Soviet Union, leasehold property in many other locations, but none have proved to be as productive as freehold title. In Africa it was unheard of, control over the allocation of land was the basis of tribal life and law, nomadic lifestyles made individual ownership of land a complete no no. Under colonial occupation the colonists often used title to own and control large swathes of the countries they occupied, after Independence these rights were almost always dismantled.
One of the side effects of the land nationalization that followed 2000 in Zimbabwe was that land became available in Peri urban areas for settlement. In 2005, the first steps were taken to plan urban settlement on this land now categized as “State Land” and this was then “sold” to homeless families in the Cities. By 2017, perhaps 1,5 million plots of land had been sold to families who had either constructed homes or were in the process of doing so.
Our Diaspora, created largely by the last decade of Mugabe’s tenure, took up this opportunity and began funding the construction of homes on the land so acquired. This has created perhaps the largest boom in construction in our history. But they did not, in legal terms, “own” the land all they had was a receipt for a payment to a land baron. They also had no services, like paved roads, clean water or waterborne sewerage, unless they built a septic tank for themselves. Today, these informal settlements stretch for kilometers in every direction in every city and town. Unlike other countries, these are not shacks, they are substantial homes, but with no market value.
Now, all these homes are to receive full freehold title. It has started in Harare but will spread to Bulawayo and Mutare next month and by the end of this year, all urban settlements will start receiving title rights over the properties they occupy, on one basis or another. This will include business property. In districts that were previously private property held under now cancelled title, the program is to grant title rights to the many thousands of small scale and medium scale farmers settled since the reform program was launched in 2000. Under this program the beneficiaries will have to pay the State for the land they occupy. This will help with the property compensation being paid to the former owners. As my son would say, it is a messy solution to a messy situation.
To complete this program, we need to grant the 35 000 villages in the former tribal districts some form of security over the land they occupy. If we did so, then these small communities could plan development and manage their resources better. That is what China has done with such success in the last 50 years.
But what does this dramatic change do for us as a nation?
The first thing which is most obvious is that we are creating marketable value. Just imagine 3,5 million title deeds over property that today has no value. Let’s say each property is worth US$50 000, then we are creating US$175 billion of marketable value. All this new wealth is in the hands of families who can now sell them or to cede them to their children when they die. They can use them as collateral for borrowings and the new title rights can be used to raise the money needed to put in paved roads, water, sanitation and power.
I know what title does to property management because I lived in a urban settlement as a child which we leased from the city. It was an urban slum. Then we were notified by the city that in future our rent would be a bond repayment and after 5 years we would own the property. The transformation was immediate, and it changed our lives forever.
But it also has a social impact, the impact of granting title rights in poor communities is always deeply emotional. They people know what it means, Epworth residents say, “we are now like Highlands”. It gives dignity and prosperity and makes a giant step towards becoming a middle-income country by 2030 which is our national objective.
For our President, it is a symbol of what it means to use political power to benefit the people in the best possible way. The long-term benefits will be transformational and all it took was a tough decision in Cabinet opposed by many who saw it as a loss of power and influence or even a source of illicit revenue. Nothing will restore our agriculture like the award of title rights over farmland; it will also stop and reverse the trend towards desertification in the drier regions of our country. When the leadership of Africa sees what this can do for their people, they will follow our example, and the impact will be revolutionary.
Post published in: Featured