Murerwa wants more cash for land audit

“We have not started the preparations for the land audit due to funding problems,” Murerwa said, adding that although the government is receiving some funding from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to set up the data capturing infrastructure, more was needed for the real audit to begin.

“We are being assisted by UNDP to set up data structures across the provinces,but we need US$31 million for the audit which has not been found,” he said. Mugabes programme to seize white-owned farmland for redistribution to landless blacks is blamed for plunging once self-sufficient Zimbabwe into food shortages after Harare failed to support black villagers resettled on former white farms with inputs to maintain production.

Mugabe has admitted mistakes in his land reforms but has often rejected calls especially by Tsvangirai’s MDC party for a review of the land redistribution programme, saying those behind the calls want to return expropriated farms to their white former owners.

The coalition government was supposed to have started last year auditing the controversial land reforms to weed out top allies of Mugabe who grabbed most of the best farms seized from whites with some ending up with as many as six farms each against the governments stated one-man-one-farm policy.

But due to the funding problems the exercise has failed to take off and meanwhile hardliners from Mugabe’s Zanu (PF) party have continued seizing more land from the few remaining white farmers in breach of the inter-party political agreement as well as a ruling by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Tribunal that called for an end to farm seizures.

It was hoped that the audit that is part of several unfulfilled provisions from the September 2008 power-sharing agreement between Mugabe, Tsvangirai and Deputy Premier Arthur Mutambara would lay the groundwork for a more orderly and equitable land redistribution programme. Major Western governments have refused to provide direct financial support to the Harare government because of the slow pace of political reforms.