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Farmers work in their maize field in this file photo

Jonathan Maphenduka
THE Agricultural and Rural Development Authority (ARDA) has announced a move to involve private investors in the resuscitation of its estates across the country.
Interested entities must be willing to invest money on a 51 percent-/49 percent equity in favour of ARDA. A good number of the estates are in communal areas, but the investment offer precludes rural or local government entities on whose domain the agricultural estates are located.
Production of strategic grains by ARDA has declined sharply over the past 20 years, impacting on food security in the country, which in turn has forced the government to import staples from neighbouring countries and abroad. ARDA normally operates on a budget from the government. Government, however, appears to have ordered ARDA to shop for operational finance from private investors. The spirit of the order is two-pronged: utilise abundant water and land resources to pull the country out of a ten-year food shortage quagmire that has lost Zimbabwe her time-honoured glory of being South Central Africa’s bread basket.

The second prong of the move is to use ARDA to promote government’s economic empowerment strategy which so far has little to show. The amazing thing in this move is the fact that ARDA is getting a new lease of life without any censure for its dismal and mediocre performance so much responsible for the country’s embarrassment.

In effect what the government has done is kissing ARDA’s hand when it should be biting it. The same tired old horses are being harnessed to repeat the failure that ARDA accomplished during the past 20 or so years. This is the repetition of the selfsame failed policy of jobs-for-boys that led to the collapse of 78 parastatals over the past 33 years of home rule. For reasons best known to the executive, the government is unable to wean itself from its disastrous policy of doling out jobs to people whose pedigree for the job has resulted in such national embarrassment as to force the government to rely on imported staples to sustain life in the country.

While the move to resuscitate the estates in the national interest is indeed commendable, the plan proposed by ARDA ignores the fact that most of the estates on offer for investment are communally based and therefore do not belong to the parastatal. The land belongs to the people with the local authority as its custodian. The most disquieting thing in this move is the preclusion of the owners of the land from participating in the resuscitation exercise. The people are not only excluded from utilisation of their land, there is moreover no guarantee that local communities will benefit from employment. ARDA is not only morally obligated to include local communities, but also legally bound to do so.

ARDA’s “foreign” partners are coming to make money to be remitted to external accounts. How will local people benefit? A potential argument against involvement of local communities in the proposed enterprise pertains to finance. It is a muted admission by government that the country cannot sustain itself and must therefore take communal land away from its owners to benefit foreign capitalists. Can the government therefore dispossess communal people to attract foreign investors with a straight face? The potential answer from government is that the people will benefit from the much-vaunted community trusts. There is also the argument that local authorities in the affected locations do not have the financial wherewithal to partner ARDA. But why are the local authorities unable to raise money to join forces with ARDA and other interested entities when they are sitting on bankable land and water resources?

Let me deal first with the potential argument about community trust benefits. It has become clear that community trusts, aside of the problem of poor performance of the economy, have a limited beneficial capacity to the communities where industries have been established. The $10 million that investors have each paid out to launch the trusts does not go far enough to benefit local communities and pacify their anxiety that they are not getting a square deal.

There are persistent rumblings from those communities where community trusts have been established. It is clear that the trusts have not lived up to the people’s expectations. Government remains ambiguous as to the identity of those who stand to benefit from the 51 percent equity in operating entities. Mining has so far been identified as a potential source of community benefits through trust funds. But the spread of the mining industry and all its sectors does not go far enough to make a meaningful impact in the welfare of the people. There is therefore a pressing need for government to widen the investment field to benefit more people.

It is my argument that the so-called ARDA estates should be tapped to spread the land benefits to those who own it. The government cannot afford to lose the opportunity presented by the resuscitation of these estates to demonstrate that it is serious in its proclamation to economically empower the people. It cannot afford to repeat the Chiadzwa diamond mines debacle where government has allowed unorthodox interests to have a share in the mines’ benefits. It risks losing the people’s confidence if it does.

The argument that government does not have money to allocate to concerned local authorities is ludicrous. If the truth be told, money is not the inhibiting factor but government’s willingness to facilitate local authorities’ involvement in the exploitation of their own land resources commercially.

Can the government justify the surrender of 50,000 hectares of irrigable communal land to the dogs of capitalism with a potential to rise to 70,000 hectares without losing face? I am talking about land that cannot be alienated from the people – not even by revolutionary means. Why then has the government employed subterfuge to take communal land from its owners without consulting them? Is it because the government is so powerful that it sees no need or necessity to consult the people? But who gave this power to the government?

Government needs to be watchful that it does not violate its own law in this regard by obeying an impulse to promote food security while infringing the people’s rights. Instead of giving ARDA licence to take the people’s rights to productive development in their areas, government should give finance to local authorities to be partners with private investors with ARDA’s role limited to technical advice. It is only then that the land can remain an asset of the people. Local authorities can then become truly the owners of the land in their own domains. This is in line with government’s stated policy of  empowering local communities.

It is not every rural location in the country where mining can be found to benefit the local people through a community trust.
These agricultural estates therefore are the only available resource to give a fillip to beneficial development for the people. Failure by government to recognise this fact will be an abdication of responsibility towards the local population, and an abnegation of government’s stated policy of empowering them.

ARDA, over the years, has proved to be a huge disappointment. Government therefore cannot continue giving this development agency a free rein to let down the nation through its mediocre and corrupt management at the expense of the local population. Government must find the money to capacitate rural district councils to a point whereby they can be partners with external investors on an equitable basis.

It is government’s responsibility to ensure that owners of these estates are commercially utilised for the benefit of the local population. ARDA’s proposed partnership with external investors abnegates the people’s desires and aspirations. The land belongs to them and they must be partners in their own right with any external investor with limited involvement by ARDA or the State. The people cannot be excluded from utilisation of their own land that has been grossly mismanaged by ARDA in the past. External investors are coming in to take away that which belongs to the people. How can the government justify the exclusion of the owners of the land from an enterprise with (if properly managed) so much promise and still profess to be the engine that drives prosperity for the masses?

There is so much talk about the virtues of revolution in this country which overshadows everything else including reason. ARDA is poised to launch a radical scheme in a bid to rehabilitate itself from the shame of years of failure. If the land was not owned by communal people, ARDA could be left alone to destroy itself once again. Why should the authority be given a free rein to use a resource for which it holds no title after years of failing to justify the trust invested in it? It is difficult to ignore the fact that ARDA destroyed one of the biggest dairy farms, Balu Estate outside Bulawayo with nearly 5,000 hectares of prime grazing land for beef production.

What happened to scores of thousands of cattle that ARDA had on the 57 Kezi-Marula state farms under its management until 1998? Antelope Estate near Maphisa was for many years ARDA’s flagship in maize and soya beans production with Jotsholo Estate becoming the first in the country to produce commercial yields of rice. The 3,000 hectare Fair Acres Estate in the Midlands produced the best wheat anywhere in the country. These are just a few examples to illustrate what the communal people stand to lose under the proposed ARDA scheme.

These examples illustrate that the authority has the technical know-how to run these estates for the benefit of the owners of the land. But something terribly wrong happened in its management that has caused the people to lose confidence as a custodian of their land. The government cannot continue condoning ARDA’s failures without appearing to be part of the problem.

ARDA is a strategic development agency but it cannot rely on government protection if it fails to deliver. This is particularly true when the land in question belongs to communal interests and not the parastatal itself. Excluding communal people from the utilisation of their land is wrong and unacceptable. Government must insist that the rural people who own the land must be involved at all levels of its commercial activities including beneficiation of the estates’ produce. Only then can government, with justification, congratulate itself for honestly driving the empowerment vehicle to promote the people’s economic empowerment.

Furthermore, there must be a guarantee that the local population does not lose out on employment opportunities to be generated under the scheme. What government appears to be willing to do just now is using a discredited development agency to take away communal land to benefit external interests.