FORMER Deputy Prime Minister in the Government of National Unity (GNU), whose life expired in 2013 after being birthed in 2009, Arthur Mutambara, has dropped a bombshell after making stunning revealation on the behind-the-scene issues regarding the country’s land reform programme.
While launching his book last week titled: Ideas and Solutions: In Search of the Elusive Zimbabwean Dream, Mutambara literally blew the lid off the keg exposing some juicy top secrets surrounding the country’s thorny and often controversial land reform.
And it is quite astonishing to hear from him that most of the people who grabbed farms from white former commercial farmers allegedly have title deeds to the farms they occupy, yet all along we were under the “misinformed” impression that all land is State-owned.
It is jaw-dropping that our ministers, judges and all the who-is-who in the top echelons of power have title deeds for the farms they hold, while thousands of resettled farmers who occupied the former commercial farms are holding on to offer letters and 99-year leases which are, in this context, largely useless pieces of paper.
“Any minister, any judge, any commander of consequence is holding on to a title deed. I will explain how it was done. You want to know how it was done during (former Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor Gideon) Gono’s tenure, during the burning of cash.
“They would first chase away the farmer from the farm and the farmer will run away, go to Australia, go to New Zealand, go to Harare and live in a shack. They can't pay fees for their children because they are desperate and they then follow the farmer six months later and ask “Mr Farmer, how much is your farm?” Mutambara claimed.
Wow!
If true, this is one of the country’s biggest conspiracies that should shake our government to the core.
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Little wonder our banks have all along refused to accept the offer letters and 99-year leases as security of tenure. It is quite clear the banks knew something and stuck to their guns.
It must have really taken some guts for Mutambara to decide to let the cat out of the bag knowing full well that he was putting the cat among the pigeons in this reverting exposé.
Of course, there will be spirited denials, tantrums galore and all manner of lambasting of Mutambara over this issue whose veracity will only be tested over the passage of time, but that he has audatiously come out like this means there is, indeed, no smoke without fire.
He cannot surely be concocting all this just to sell his book, or to regain relevance in the country’s political discourse after he was swallowed by the GNU-era cobwebs. This is too serious a matter for him to be making baseless allegations that can trigger far-reaching political turmoil if resettled farmers cry foul and demand tangible security of tenure for the land they occupy. We, indeed, are in a fascinating season of exposés.
