Journalist and government critic Hopewell Chin’ono described the Zimbabwean government’s new policy allowing Black Zimbabweans who received farmland for free to sell it as not just “foolish,” but also criminal.
In a post on X, Chin’ono argued that expropriated land should belong to the government. He asserted that anyone willing and able to farm should be permitted to use the land for a fee or purchase it directly from the government, rather than from beneficiaries of farm invasions. Below is Chin’ono’s statement in full:
The Zimbabwean government announced a new cabinet policy yesterday that will allow Black Zimbabweans who received farmland for free to sell it to Black Zimbabweans who did not. Do you see how absurd this reads?
This is not only economically foolish but criminal too. One person receives something for free, sells it for a profit, and the one who didn’t get the land is expected to fund the original land grab. Crazy stuff!
Although Zimbabwe’s tyrant and dictator, Emmerson Mnangagwa, is well known internationally as a thoroughly corrupt man, and it is clear that he and his goons want to profit from this, it will not work.
First, only a fool or a gang member of the looting club would buy contested land. Any farmland obtained after 2000, during the ZANUPF land invasions, is still contested to this day.
Title can only change hands when the former White farmers sign a deed of cession. A deed of cession is a legal document transferring property ownership from one party to another. It allows a lender (bank) to sell the property to recover an outstanding debt.
Former white farmers will not sign this until they are fully compensated, as the Zimbabwean regime under Mnangagwa had committed to doing in 2018.
That land should belong to the government, and anyone willing and able to farm should be allowed to use it for a fee or to buy it from government and not from beneficiaries of farm invasions and fast track land transfers. When they no longer need it, they should return it to the government.
However, this government, composed of crooks who have already looted billions of YOUR money, seeks another big payout by crafting a law that allows them to sell the many farms they invaded, many which are idle.
As long as the properties on that land are not paid for, and the white farmers have not signed the deed of cession, anyone buying that land under a ZANUPF law is throwing money away. It will eventually be contested, as we have seen many times before.
A notable example is Uganda. Dictator Idi Amin ordered the seizure of all businesses owned by Asians, just as ZANUPF did with farmland. He handed them to his cronies.
Ugandans were told they could buy those businesses from each other as Mnangagwa is attempting to do with the land, but it did not work in the long run because economics doesn’t work that way.
When the current Ugandan ruler, General Yoweri Museveni, came to power in 1986, his government had to track down those Asian owners or their descendants and pay them compensation because no serious investor wanted to touch those contested businesses except the crooks amongst themselves.
Uganda eventually compensated for properties seized from Asians during the Idi Amin era. After Amin was overthrown in 1979, the new government established the Departed Asians Property Custodial Board to manage the seized properties.
In 1992, General Museveni announced that the properties would be returned to their original owners or their descendants, with compensation paid for those that had been sold or destroyed.
The expulsion of Asians from Uganda was a traumatic event with lasting consequences for the country’s economy and society, much like ZANU PF’s land invasions that destroyed Zimbabwe’s economy.
Nearly every business was linked to farming, and when farming collapsed, everything else followed.
The issue at the moment is not about selling and buying land, it is about the investment world having zero confidence in anything ZANUPF says due to a well established track record of lies and fake promises.
A 99-year lease would have been sufficient to make land tradeable, but this failed because Mnangagwa continued with land invasions. Nobody holding land today is safe unless they are part of the ZANUPF leadership.
As long as people can lose their farms due to party affiliation or political views, farmland will never be a worthwhile long-term investment for any serious business person, farming is a business.
The land is owned by the government, which must pay compensation as promised and then allow any Zimbabwean to buy it from the government without political conditions.
Why should someone who invaded 21 farms and holds them in their custody be allowed to sell them when they paid nothing for them? How is this any different from colonialism?
This is criminal and should be REJECTED in its entirety by all sane Zimbabweans!
What Mnangagwa and his ZANUPF cabinet want will lead to serious political problems and upheavals that led to a war of independence, including the economic viability of such a move, the legal status of the land, and the moral implications of profiting from an unfair distribution of resources.
In his State of the Nation Address (SONA),the Zimbabwean dictator stated that he was compensating 94 former white farmers, providing them with US$20 million.
What you need to know is that these farmers are linked only to Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (BIPPA), and around 70% of them are Dutch.
A BIPPA, or Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement, is an international agreement between two countries aimed at promoting and protecting foreign investment.
The agreement includes provisions that protect investors from discriminatory treatment, expropriation of assets, and unfair restrictions on the repatriation of profits.
ZANUPF violated these agreements regardless of having signed them, a terrible track record of not honouring legal agreements.
We also have 650 Black farmers who lost their land to ZANUPF’s fast-track land invasions. They were told that they would get their farms back under Statutory Instrument 62 of 2020.
However, they did not regain their farms. How can a sane person buy that land when it is contested and without a deed of cession? Remember, these are not even white farmers, they are Black farmers.
There are 4,500 title deeds in contention, yet Mnangagwa only mentioned 94 in his SONA address. Who will pay these thousands of former white farmers?
How can one establish such a policy without a comprehensive land audit that assesses how many invaded farms one owns, what they have produced, and the amount of taxes they have paid to the Zimbabwean fiscus?
Land policy will require a national strategy based on economic viability and a non-partisan approach.
No one should benefit from selling land they did not purchase from the state or the former land owners.
Additionally, agreements with the banking sector are crucial, as arrangements solely with ZANUPF hold little value to the rest of the world.
Lastly, is what ZANUPF wants to do based on Leasehold or Freehold title? Freehold and leasehold are two different types of property ownership, with distinct differences in terms of the rights and responsibilities of the owner.
With freehold ownership, the owner holds the title to the land and the buildings on it, the owner has full control over the property and is free to make any changes or improvements, subject to local planning regulations, the owner is responsible for maintaining the property and paying for any repairs or upkeep, the owner has the right to live in the property for as long as they choose and can sell it at any time.
With leasehold ownership, the owner has the right to occupy the property for a fixed period, typically 99.
The owner does not own the land, but instead has a lease agreement with the freeholder, who owns the land and in this case it would be government.
The lease agreement sets out the terms of the lease, including the amount of ground rent that must be paid to the freeholder each year, the owner may be required to obtain permission from the freeholder before making any changes to the property.
All these things are not addressed because in my view this is not done in good faith, but to steal and plunder billions of dollars from selling land if they do get clowns willing to put money down the drain.
How do you get free land, free mechanisation equipment, free inputs, free fuel and free equipment maintenance every year, yet you ask the taxpayer to pay the previous farmers while you get the right to sell on the land, it is mindless and uneconomic looting that only a person with a criminal mind can defend?
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