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Tendai Mugabe Harare Bureau
The government has unearthed serious irregularities in the allocation of farms during the land reform programme, as it emerged that some children as young as 10 years benefited from it.
It has also been noted that the land reform programme was marred with double allocation of farms due to mix up of names.
Lands and Rural Resettlement Minister Dr Douglas Mombeshora told our Harare Bureau yesterday that a preliminary audit on the database of the beneficiaries done by his ministry revealed that some undeserving people benefited from the programme.

He said a comprehensive audit to uproot the irregularities was on cards and it required $35 million.
“What we have been doing is to take a batch of ID numbers to the Office of the Registrar General for them to give us the details of the beneficiaries, including the date of birth to cross check with what we have in our database,” said Minister Mombeshora.

“We are also discovering a number of anomalies. You know our policy, we do not give somebody land who is less than 21 years, but we are getting people with 10 years, 12 years, owning plots and that could explain why some plots are vacant.

“Some people acquired farms on behalf of their children and used the correct ID numbers, but lied on the dates of birth.”
Minister Mombeshora said they took the ID numbers to the Registrar General’s Office because the government used them to generate offer letters.

In light of that, Minister Mombeshora said, the government would repossess the land that was acquired fraudulently.
In some cases, he said, the ministry was given wrong names of farms resulting in double allocation.

“We want to go and verify that information when we do the audit to say which farm was sub-divided, what are the correct details of the farms and get the correct names as was on the title deeds and verifying with what we have used in the ministry because we have seen some errors and those errors have caused problems of double allocation,” he said.

Minister Mombeshora said once one made a mistake in the spelling of the name of a farm, the computer would pick that as a different farm and it would be allocated to another person.

On sub-letting of farms, Minister Mombeshora said such practices were illegal although the government tolerated approved joint venture agreements.
“Sub-leasing is not allowed at all,” he said.

“We allow joint ventures and contract farming.”