By
Bernard Bwoni
To build means to
shape or to improve something. It entails the formation and development of something.
When you build you are assembling or putting something together to come up with
a complex creation. Building is an art, it requires skill, it is about learning
that building skill and building a structure with those skills learned. To build
anything is a revolutionary process and there is need for a strategy, a plan
and the right tools for the project. It appears that the BUILD blueprint that
is being circulated with the signature of the former VP Joyce Mujuru has
‘tools’ as its drafters and no tools for the actual building task itself. A
builder has a plan, has tools, has something tangible to look forward to,
involve a skill, it follows a pattern and a logical step-by-step approach. The
architects of the BUILD blueprint have been haphazard, elusive, and indecisive
and not willing to be publicly associated with the outcome of their efforts in
coming up with this document. It is going to be difficult to sell the contents
of a blueprint whose architects are refusing to claim ownership. To build
requires the ground preparatory work. It is about laying down solid foundations
that would be able to withstand anything. Those secretly peddling the document
via the media do not have the right 'parts' to assemble anything complex let
alone assemble anything. You know something is not right when 8 months after
being booted out of the ruling party one then has a damascene moment and
decides to put people first. They had over 30 years to put people first, but
instead put self ahead of all else and now 8 months in the political wilderness
they are 'in it for the people' and making claims to build. How can you build
with no builders, no tools and no ground to build from?
There is nothing ground-breaking
about an economic blueprint with a disturbing preoccupation with ‘property
rights’ and carefully worded statements like ‘all persons who call Zimbabwe
“home” shall be entitled to access land and participate in its sustainable
utilization’. All of the architects of the BUILD are clearly aware of the
contents of the country’s constitution as they were until recently part and
parcel of the same system they are now purporting requires rebuilding. It is
important to note that Chapter 4, Part 2, section 71 and 72 of the constitution
addresses the issue of property rights in Zimbabwe. Section 71, subsection 2,
states “subject to section 72, every person has the right, in any part of
Zimbabwe, to acquire, hold, occupy, use, transfer, hypothecate, lease or
dispose of all forms of property, either individually or in association with
others”. Section 72 relates to agricultural land. As per the country's
people-driven constitution every Zimbabwean has a right to property and not
just “any persons who call Zimbabwe “home”. The constitution recognise the
right of all Zimbabweans of all colours, race and they do have a right to
property. Section 72 addresses the issue of those who wrongfully entered
another's land with force and arms, dispossessed them. Section 72 is a written
right to re-enter own land and re-establish this right under the protection of
the constitution. It follows the principles
of equitable distribution following conquest, displacement and dispossession.
Trying to undo the provisions of Section 72 of the constitution is simply a way
to un-build what has been built for the previously displaced people of
Zimbabwe.
The BUILD document
also reads, "We shall enforce, promote and respect property rights and
address historical compulsory acquisition through fair and transparent
compensation". In the context of Zimbabwe, this property rights
contention is now defunct, is not exactly absolute and BUILD brings forward the
unimaginative arguments for the free market economics and private property
system whilst neglecting the injustices that shaped the property rights
narrative that Zimbabwe had to dismantle to get to where the country is today.
The issue of property rights has been done and dealt with exhaustively within
the provisions of the country’s constitution. Conquest and coercion may have
enforced legal rights to property in the early days of colonization but did not
create moral rights to land grabbed illegally. The new Zimbabwe constitution
addresses the issues of property and property relating to agricultural land
sufficiently. Those trying to choke the nation with this property rights
sophistry have to realize that most property rights arguments say very little
about the injustice of the claims to property, that is the holdings of those
who first and forcibly wrestled property (land) from original inhabitants of
Zimbabwe. BUILD needs to build on a strong argument on property rights focusing
on those displaced and not champion the cause of those who displaced. The
property rights narrative needs to be broken down to its bare basics and
understood within the context of historical displacement and correct the notion
of how rectifying that is being misconstrued as having created another form of
displacement.
The document
reads, ‘we shall give immediate value to agricultural land by providing
transparent land policy framework that attracts investment, creates, promotes
and supports security of tenure and bankable leases’. This persistence with
property rights and ‘security of tenure’ throughout the whole document is
worrying and has the neoliberal marks as prescribed to the MDC-T before BUILD.
The question to pose is how are they going to “give immediate value to
agricultural land”? The proposals within BUILD will inevitably lead to a
reversal of the land reform and those behind this blueprint are aware of it or
oblivious to it. There is a risk that with what BUILD proposes as a “land
policy framework that attracts investment, creates, promotes and supports
security of tenure” most of those who benefited from the land reform might end
up selling up and that goes against the provisions of the constitution within
Section 72. BUILD aims to un-build what the land reform achieved that is to
redress a historical inequality. The likelihood of one selling up to land
grabbers if full title is given to land is very high. The likelihood of people
borrowing money against the land and using that money purchase Range Rovers,
Louis Vuitton, Romanee-Conti Grand Cur and everything else but farming is very
high. The idea of the 99 year leases is there for the resettled farmers to
establish themselves first, to realise the real value of the land for present
and future generations and then only then will this ownership will be
meaningful. BUILD intends to disrupt that process in their quest to un-build
what the land reform built.
The BUILD document
goes on to state ‘we shall facilitate availability of adequate and
affordable lines of credit through guarantee of property rights, sanctity of
contracts and other investor protection mechanisms’. The document is
offering a lot of ‘guarantees’ and most of these are ‘property rights’ relating
to land. What they are arguing for is a transformation approach to property
rights. This is in fact a finders-keeper approach and claims by those who want
a reversal of the country’s land reform is based on the first occupancy
argument. It is important to understand the full property rights argument
especially so for Africa because of a history of illegal occupation, property
rights in terms of land need to be addressed in the way they have been
addressed within the Zimbabwe constitution. BUILD and before them, the MDC-T
has been fronting the first occupancy property rights argument, that the first
person to transform an unoccupied field into a farm owns the farm. The
transformation approach claims that any person who transforms an ‘unowned’
resource owns what he creates, thus owns the transformation. This is an unreasonable
argument because merely being the first person to observe something does not
give you any right to full private ownership. In the context of the Zimbabwe
situation, there were original inhabitants of those lands who were displaced.
The original inhabitants have the full right to the land and hence the
provisions as set within the country’s constitution that addressed the issue of
property rights in two sections, the right to property and the right to
property relating to agricultural land.
bernardbwoni.blogspot.com
No comments:
Post a Comment