Lack of funds stalls Zim land audit

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. The coalition government was supposed to have this month begun 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.

It was hoped that the audit that is part of several unfulfilled provisions from last years power-sharing agreement between Mugabe, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and Deputy Premier Arthur Mutambara would lay the groundwork for a more orderly and equitable land redistribution programme. But Murerwa said an application to Treasury last month for funds for the audit yielded nothing and it was unclear when the government might be able to raise cash for the exercise. Finance Minister Tendai Biti was not immediately available for comment on the matter. But Biti, from Tsvangirais MDC party, has in the past said the unity government is broke and virtually unable to fund anything else other than salaries and wages for its workers.

Murerwas disclosure of the coalition governments failure to kick-start the land audit comes as an exercise to write a new constitution for Zimbabwe that is the cornerstone of reforms the administration must implement during its two-year lifespan has ground to a halt because of a lack of resources and also because of political squabbling.

A special parliamentary committee tasked to lead the constitutional reform process said this week that it was unable to carry out its work because the government has not given it money and other resources. While failure by Mugabes ZANU PF party to submit names of people to head some of the sub-committees of the constitutional committee means the constitution-making exercise cannot get started even if funds were made available.Lack of resources mainly because major Western governments have refused to provide direct financial support to the Harare government because of the slow pace of political reforms could cripple the administration that is also threatened by endless squabbles between ZANU PF and the MDC its two main pillars. A summit of southern African leaders that ended in the Democratic Republic of the Congo yesterday urged Zimbabwes political parties to work to remove obstacles standing in the way of the unity government.