The land question still has not been addressed properly in the new constitution. The 'new' constitution is the same old hag with a new layer of make-up.
The system of priviledged land ownership left behind by colonial dispensation has not been substituted with a more inclusive system.
Under the new constitution 90% of rural dwellers will still be living in untitled communal lands or to use their original name, native reserves.
From the way the constitution is written it is clear that there is no intention of addressing the lack of constitutionally protected tenure that prevails in the former native reserves. The politicians are focused on fighting for tenure rights on priviledged and titled former whites only land. They seem to have forgotten the urgent need to give the dwellers of 'native reserves' constitutionally protected tenure.
Under this so called new constitution, what happened to the people of Tangwena in the Rhodesia days, and what happened to the people of Chiadzwa just recently, is still possible. Peasants can be kicked out of the homes they have lived in for generations with no possible recourse to the law. None of them has got title deeds to the land they call home, so they cannot go to court like the formerly priviledged class, white farmers, are doing.
Both Zanu-PF and the old colonial dispensation are united in fighting for the rights of only the priviledged. What is widely and incorrectly passed off as land reform, is merely the fight is over who should be occupying the priviledged position between the new political elite and the descendants of colonial settlers.
While the peasants and other under-priviledged groups such as farmworkers are useful pawns, especially when voting time comes, nobody has given careful thought to their land rights and needs.
During the colonial era Africa was cursed with leaders who didn't have a vision beyond their skin colour. Today Africa is cursed with leaders who don't have a vision beyond their pockets. We should look at the land question beyond the pockets of the political elite and the skin colour of the settler occupiers.
The growing trend of headmen and chiefs selling land, will eventually lead to massive chaos if it is not arrested by constitutionally protected tenure. My suggestion is that current homesteads and fields (misha, imizi) should be surveyed, pegged and the owners given some form of constitutionally recognised title (either deed of lease, or deed of grant) to their homes.
Let me make it clear that this is not targeted at chiefs and headman. I only mentioned them to highlight one of the many bad trends that lack of constitutionally protected tenure in communal lands is giving rise to. In fact, they too need constitutionally protected tenure, on their very own homesteads.
Right now the constitutional owner of communal land is the state. The state can take communal land and give it to private companies (Sviba Hills), or even foreigners (Chiadzwa), or preferred individuals (Tangwena in the 1960s).
The people in the communal lands need to be protected from the whims of unscrupulous 'leaders' by legally secured tenure. These leaders could be politicians hoping to make a huge killing, headman and chiefs selling pieces of land for a quick buck, or administrative officials taking advantage of people.
For a long time land reform has been couched in the language of taking land back from white descendants of colonial invaders. However to me proper land reform should include bestowing constitutionally protected land rights to the residents of former native reserves. They were denied these rights by colonialists for reasons of oppression. Continuing to deny them these rights is continuing the oppression.
Peasants need land rights that are economically actionable in the modern Roman-Dutch law based legal and economic systems.
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