Zanu PF is godfather of land barons
IMAGINE the devil, who is supposed to be grilling all sinners and sundry for a living in hot hell, starts wholesaling re tenders and extinguishers, freezers as well as air coolers.
Well, that’s not a Saul-to-Paul kind of thing. God has lost the appetite to convert villains into heroes just like that. He is busy. Where he had to deal with mere thousands of people back in the days, he has billions of culprits to review on a daily basis today, seen?
In late December, the then Zanu PF acting secretary general, Patrick Chinamasa, took some time o his holiday to say mumble some gibberish to the world about his party and land barons. First thing, he acknowledged that there was a problem of land barons who were illegally grabbing land and selling it to home seekers and business people.
Second, without anyone asking him, he denied that the land barons were Zanu PF members or individuals with direct links to the ruling party. Third, he denied that Zanu PF had ever granted authority to land barons. Fourth, he said Zanu PF policy was that state land must be allocated through the Local Government ministry. Number ve, he said the Zanu PF government ensured that illegal land barons were arrested.
Five rancid lies under one foul breath from Mr Bin Man! Just in case you don’t know, Chinamasa is that dude who cut the ribbon to a communal rubbish bin during election time a few years ago. He lost his parliamentary bin—sorry, bid— and, since then, Zanu PF has been sending him to say all sorts of trash when things get too boring.
Point is, all the above ve claims that Chinamasa made can be put to a test and, beyond reasonable doubt, found to be false. He is the master of disinformation.
Ninety nine point nine nine nine percent of all the barons are Zanu PF. The zero point zero zero one percent are sordid pretenders from opposition-run councils and the streets and that’s hardly anything to talk about.
Since the 2005 Murambatsvina blitz that forcefully and brutally removed close to a million people from their homes, the phenomenon of land baronry has grown steeply.
That’s mainly because, after senselessly displacing the people, government found itself with the burden to nd shelter for the very people it had “cleaned out”, and, so as to de ate the pressure, gave the duty to nd and allocate land to cooperatives, war vets, politicians and developers.
The number of the land barons is as big as the number of ballots of ballots that Zanu PF has stolen since 1980, a humungous gure by all standards. But, in order to put things in clear light, a few telling instances will be used here.
Some actually predate Murambatsvina but remain a problem to this date. Like, do you remember the Flora Buka land report of the early 2000s?
Buka was Lands minister then and tasked by the late Robert Mugabe to head a commission of inquiry into farm allocations following the fast track land reform programme.
The report exposed massive multiple land ownership. And the multiple land holders were big Zanu PF guys, Mugabe himself included even though this wasn’t said in her report.
What’s happening now is that among the very people who were exposed by Buka as multiple farm owners, a significant number of them has, against the law, turned the farms into residential land. If those people are not land barons, my name is Guy Fawkes, the Gunpowder Assassin.
Just to give another example. Sometime in early September 2016, as the Lacoste-G40 war was heating up, Mugabe went to Shake-Shake House for a key meeting. As per tradition, his cheerleaders lined up at the entrance to welcome him. Among them was Saviour Kasukuwere, then minister of Local Government who had just replaced Ignatius Chombo.
When Mugabe tottered up to Kasukuwere, he impatiently accused this 2023 presidential wanna-be of stealing state land and selling it to individuals.
According to Mugabe, Kasukuwere had abused his o ce as a cabinet minister to grab land that had been earmarked for Zanu PF youths’ residential stands and sold it to Planet Africa owned by a fake prophet, Walter Magaya, the late TB Joshua’s spiritual son, and others who included his political sidekicks, Shadreck Mashayamombe and Sarah Mahoka, Betty Kaseke and Innocent Hamandishe, according to reports by the governmentcontrolled media then.
Well, Kasukuwere pleaded not guilty at that parade, but what he did later proved that he was, actually, guilty. For he quickly reversed the sales to all the other buys but Magaya’s Planet Africa.
Why Magaya was spared is anyone’s guess. You know what happens with these so-called men-of-God.
They tend to wield so much power over our superstitious politicians who believe that you need miracles to win and keep in power. There is another sign. Kasukuwere’s other G40 sidekick, Walter Mzembi, was going to Magaya’s PhD ministry. Do the math on your own.
This case shows several things that y straight into Mr Bin Man’s bespectacled face. Zanu PF never arrests land barons.
If they are going to parade any land barons and claim to have arrested them, it’s the small guys who do the dirty work for the big guys or some such common thieves.
Needless to say, even those small sh are released at a later time. If they were sincere about law enforcement, Kasukuwere must have been the rst one to be arrested.
Maybe they must have started with Chombo, his predecessor.
Because we hear lots of things about how he became a super baron and property owner, particularly during a divorce case in which his ex-wife was claiming her share of the loot. Chombo was and is Zanu PF.
So when you hear Mr Bin Man say his government goes through the Local Government in the allocation of state land, you know what he means.
He means that ministers of Local Government have the red passport to illegally grab land for personal gain and never worry a single thing about it.
He means their o cial position is to let ministers and the politically connected steal land, without calling those people land barons.
Then there is the Land Commission audit that was released in late 2019. This commission was set up way back in 2005, and it was only after President Mnangagwa took over that it started doing some work.
This commission produced a detailed report into the illegal sale of urban state land that prejudiced the government of a dizzy US$3 billion involving some 170 mega-hectare farms.
Listen to this.
The executive summary of the report was released to the public in 2019. Weirdly, even the chairperson of the commission didn’t get a copy of the full nal report. Let alone the commissioners.
The ZBC got the report, though, and started serialising it. That was short-lived because someone snatched the copy from the broadcaster, so there was no further serialisation.
But the executive summary gave some useful insights. The majority of the land barons held powerful positions in the Zanu PF district development committees.
That’s a huge statistic. The Zanu PF secretariat can’t turn around and start claiming that it wasn’t aware of what was happening, given the sheer magnitude.
Anyway, for the sake of argument, let’s give them the bene t of doubt. But then, you can’t be too benevolent on your skepticism.
The Land Commission report recommended that there be thorough investigations into 430 criminal violations associated with this vile land baronry.
When Chinamasa spoke last December, the police quickly stepped in and threatened to arrest land barons.
As if Mr Bin Man had made a Eureka discovery of land barons. But it’s clear that the law enforcers are also being dishonest.
Because, you see, if they were serious about arresting land barons, they should have started in 2019—and even before—when the Land Commission completed its report.
You tell me, what has happened to the 430 cases of land violations that were supposed to be investigated on the advice of the Land Commission?
Which one is this now that the police are going for plain crooks who make fraudulent deed transfers, then the o cial media calls them land barons?
We need to know what happened to the Kasukuwere et al cases, the multiple farm owners converting farms into residential plots, et cetera, et cetera.
Goodwills Masimirembwa, the Zanu PF provincial chairperson for Harare, has loudly acknowledged that there is a big problem of land barons and said they have reported to the Local Government ministry.
That’s in connection with Hatcli e land baronry to which Nyasha Chikwinya, a former minister and women’s league chairperson, has been linked through the Pilgrims Rest housing scheme.
Yet zilch. No action.
If Zanu PF people are the land barons and Zanu PF doesn’t take action outside the yapping by people like Chinamasa, you know what it means.
It means Zanu PF is the godfather of land barons.