The Importance of Freehold Tenure.
egc...@africaonline.co.zw
The Importance of Freehold Tenure.
As Africa broke the shackles of colonial domination after 1950, all newly independent States had one thing in common, they took action to take control of their land. Colonial settlers were uprooted and their land redistributed. Freehold title rights were dissolved, and they returned their land to the pre-colonial land settlement systems that had dominated their countries before the colonial powers took over.
The political gains were short lived, agricultural productivity declined, and food shortage became rampant. They were not alone, the Communist world, under the misapprehension that private property was the core of evil in society, took action to eliminate any form of tenure in their countries. The centralization of agriculture was adopted as a policy. In the Soviet Union. When the Kulaks defied the State over the policy, Stalin simply eliminated them in one of the largest genocides of history. In China, in one year, over 30 million people died of starvation.
It is an astonishing truth that the great majority of the food produced in the world is generated by less than 20 per cent of the global land resources that are held under freehold title. In the Soviet Union, one of the greatest empires in history, just 3 per cent of the land resources available for private plots, generated the great majority of the food consumed because they were privately managed. The huge, centralized farms were a disaster.
In Zimbabwe the destruction of title rights under the land reform program launched in 2000, resulted in food production declining on former commercial farms by 70 per cent. Strangely, food output in Communal Areas settled on a traditional basis declined even further by 73 per cent, perhaps indicating some symbiosis between the two systems. Zimbabwe had to be fed by international donors and in 2007/8, 70 per cent of our population was on food aid, mainly from the USA.
There is nothing magic about title rights. Just drive about your suburb. Homes that are well kept, gardens with lawns and flowers and trees, grass trimmed on the road verge, are always privately owned. It is the incentive of ownership. We humans take care of what we own. Farming is no different. But there is much more to it. The revolutionary movements that led Africa out of the grip of colonial subjugation were quite right in seeking to control their land. In every country, it is their most valuable asset. But everyone needs to understand that if it is a common good and has no value, it will be abused and cannot contribute to the wealth of the nation or the wellbeing of its people.
There is ample evidence that the great deserts of the world often have land abuse by stock owners as their root cause. The Great Sahara Desert, largest in the world, was once the breadbasket of Europe. It was open savannah veld. Now it stretches to the very edge of the tropical forests of West Africa. The main reason – no management, nomadic stock owners simply use it as a common good. They are planting trees in a green belt across Africa to try and reverse the process, but it cannot work if ownership is not passed to the communities who use it for a living.
In southern Africa, the desert in Botswana – the Kalahari Desert, is expanding at a kilometer a year. Up against the Botswana border with Zimbabwe, we have Districts where sand dunes now cover fences. The challenge where this process of desertification takes place is recovery. It is extremely difficult to bring it back to viable agricultural land. Sound agronomic policies have demonstrated that in arid areas, often receiving less than 300 mls of rain a year, that can be managed to protect the soil, retain moisture for vegetative growth and even increase output over practices that are destroying the land. But this is impossible while land remains a common good.
But aside from the agricultural use aspects, the ownership of property is the cornerstone of sound urban growth. Urbanisation of the global population is rapidly accelerating. Cities are growing across the world and soon, for the first time in history, the great majority of people will be living in urban areas. Some years ago, I was a guest at a conference in India organised by a group called “Opportunity International”. After our meetings I travelled to Delhi, the capital City. I was taken to a project of OI in the City where they had adopted a community of several thousand slum dwellers who had been living on land under plastic and tin shacks. The city called it an eyesore and had bulldozed the settlement several times.
OI had bought the land from the city and each family had been given 50 square metres of land. The community had been planned, with roads, schools and factory space. Water and sewerage systems have been installed. Each family received a loan from OI of US$500. That was three years ago. Every family had built a home – most three stories semidetached. We visited one and I spoke to a 16-year-old girl about the change. She said everything had changed, they no longer feared dispossession, they were homeowners, she was in school for the first time and hoped to become a doctor. The transformation was complete. Over 95 per cent had repaid their loans. OI is a US Christian organisation, and this was 100 per cent a Hindu community.
In Zimbabwe, the President has adopted title rights as a cornerstone policy of his last term in office. He did this in 2022, and we have formed a Trust to implement the policy. In the next 10 years the Deeds Office here, assisted by the Trust, will issue several million title deeds to homeowners and farmers throughout the country. This will unlock over US$300 billion worth of property and transform millions of lives. It will also give the 200 000 new farmers, settled under the land reform program, an asset base that they can use to secure the funding essential to modern agriculture.
We are urging the authorities to consider extending this program to the rural communities settled under traditional title. This will involve recognizing the boundaries of 35 000 villages and allowing these village communities to manage their land in their interests. A business friend of mine, who heads a major company, has adopted his home village of 500 families in a remote, arid part of the country. They now have clean water, a school, shopping center and every home has a irrigated garden. They manage their cattle properly and have the necessary facilities to maximise output and sales. Completely life changing.
We recently had the oldest township in the country (Mbare) scanned by drone in Harare. This Community of just 500 hectares is home to half a million people and one of the largest business centers in the country. We are looking at how to give this community title rights and decent accommodation at an affordable cost. We also want to convert the area occupied by thousands of small businesses into traders and manufacturers who have security and services such as power, water and sanitation. It is a real challenge but giving the land on which it is based value will create the resources necessary.
This program, totally self-financing and funded by the private sector, will create a middle class and transform lives for everyone. It will make Zimbabwe a pioneer in this field and when other African States see what can be done, they will follow our lead.
Eddie Cross
Harare 6th of February 2025