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 as 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
ZANUPF’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?
Hopewell Chin’ono writing on X
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