social commentary:with Moses Mugugunyeki
Esnath Kuitira* (38) is one of hordes of women selling farm produce at a market place called Guzha under Manyame Rural District Council, Mashonaland East province.
The market place, popularly known as Chikwanha, and the biggest supplier of farm produce to the populous town of Chitungwiza, 40km outside Harare, is a hub of activity as farmers, mainly women from the neighbouring communal areas of Seke, Chihota and Hwedza, bring all sorts of farm produce, including vegetables, and crops.
For Kuitira, a widow and mother of three, her produce has drastically been reduced leaving her with little to sell.
“These days I am not bringing as much vegetables as l used to when my husband was alive,” Kuitira told The Standard.
“After my husband died, l lost a portion of our farmland to my in-laws, who sold it to someone from the city, who has since built a very big house.”
Zimbabwe, just like any other African country, is saddled with traditional practices, rituals and attitudes, which perpetuate the discrimination and infringement of women’s fundamental civil liberties.
Although the constitution outlaws violation of an individual’s rights to land or property on the basis of gender, most women in Zimbabwe are not able to inherit family estates and property, because of a patriarchal value system.
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In its endeavour to create an enabling environment for the attainment of equity and equality between women and men, Zimbabwe has ratified various international conventions and declarations on gender equality — the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (Cedaw) of 1979, the Beijing Platform for Action (1995) and the Sadc Gender and Development Declaration (1997), among others.
The Beijing Platform for Action affirmed that women’s right to inheritance and ownership of land and property should be recognised, while Cedaw provides a universal basis for promoting women’s rights as human rights, referring to women’s rights to equal treatment in land and agrarian reform processes.
At home, the country has put in place various national legislative instruments aimed at guaranteeing women’s legal and constitutional rights and these include the Zimbabwe Gender Commission Act (Chapter 10:3) the Communal Land Act, which was amended in 2003, the Rural Land Act amended in 2002, the Traditional Leaders Act amended in 2001, the Administrative Court (Land Acquisition Rules of 1998 amended in 2005) and the Rural District Councils Act of 1988, which was last amended in 2002, among other policies.
Although the constitution provides equal rights to men and women, the latter’s access to land is largely through inheritance, which is governed by customs.
Customary law has been allowed to prevail over legislative instruments, leaving women vulnerable to harmful traditional and cultural practices.
Kuitira said her in-laws and traditional leaders in the area were parcelling out land for a song to home seekers from the nearby town of Chitungwiza and Harare.
A 2016 government audit on illegal structures established that more than 12 000 houses in Seke communal lands were allocated on land earmarked for other purposes such as grazing lands, wetlands and land for growing crops.
The reports identified land barons and traditional leaders as the major culprits in the parcelling out of land.
“If you want a piece of land we can facilitate it for you as we work with our village head here,” said a young man at Chirasavana business centre, one of the fastest growing communities on the fringes of Chitungwiza’s Unit L suburb.
“We have land in abundance here and we can organise paper work with the local authority.”
Kuitira said while she welcomed the transformation of her community into an urban settlement, she feels the development was undermining food security in the area.
According to a report by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), urbanisation is projected to cause the loss of between 1,6 and 3,3 million hectares of prime agricultural land per year in the period between 2000 and 2030.
Across the province, Harare’s growth is spilling over in fertile soils and farmland, resulting in permanent loss of arable land in Goromonzi’s Domboshava area, some 40km outside the capital.
“We lost a large chunk of our farmland after my husband connived with community leaders to divide it into plots before selling them to home seekers,” said Kerina Dube from Mungate.
Mungate, Mverechena, Showground and Nyamande are some of the booming communities in Domboshava.
“My husband did not bring home the money realised from the sale of plots. He squandered it with friends and the village head.
“The land is gone and it used to help us a lot. We no longer have enough food to sell and for the family.”
Dube said in her heydays she would realise a bumper harvest from their fields, selling the surplus at Mbare Musika and other markets in and around Harare. She said women were being side-lined when it comes to marketing and administration of land, which is a privilege of traditional leaders, who in most cases are men.
The operations of traditional leaders are administered by the district development coordinator (DDC), formely district administrator.
Manyame DDC Lucia Manhokwe said she could not discuss the issue over the phone.
“Normally, I don’t discuss such issues over the phone. You can come to the office during the week,” she said.
However, an official in the Local Government ministry said traditional leaders did not have the power to sell land to private individuals.
“According to the laws of this country, traditional leaders are the custodians of the communal land, but they are not entitled to sell the land,” said the official.
Tsitsi Mashiri, chairperson ofthe Seke Rural Development Platform (SERDP), said it was disheartening to see women losing land through illegal parcelling-out of land.
“Women’s land rights is one of the pertinent issues that we have put to the fore through engagement with traditional leaders, councillors, the district development coordinator and local authorities in Seke rural,” Mashiri said.
“We were advised by the authorities that the selling of land had been stopped forthwith, but we are surprised that there are people, who are still selling the land.”
“You will realise that women are even excluded from the benefits of land administration, management and development schemes.”
Mashiri said women had poor access to legal services and are being disadvantaged by lack of understanding of laws within communities and households.
“Most women lack information, education and access to the legal system. SERDP is going to the grassroots with the hope of transforming communities to be more sensitive to women’s economic and social rights,” she said.
Addressing Sadc journalists attending a woman customary land rights reporting workshop recently, Nolundi Luwaya from the Land and Accountability Research Centre at the University of Cape Town, said the land rights issue was multifaceted because of the nature and distortion of customary tenure.
“The interference of ‘official’ customary law together with increasing land scarcity undermined these [women] rights and changed their shape in service of ‘buttressing the patriarchal authority’,” Luwaya said.
She said land rights were meshed in state laws, customs, traditions and histories that vary from country to country.
A 2014 land survey by the Zimbabwe Land Agrarian Network (ZiLAN) revealed that women still faced challenges in acquiring land.
According to the survey, over 83,6% women benefited as spouses of the male land beneficiaries and A2 women farmers (17,5%) faced more eviction threats in comparison to men (4,1%).
Zimbabwe Gender Commission CEO Virginia Muwanigwa said the institution was working in collaboration with various stakeholders to address the imbalances.
“We work with stakeholders in the land discourse to ensure that women’s rights to land and related resources are upheld in line with the constitution,” Muwanigwa said.
Chitungwiza and Manyame Rural Residents Association (Camera) acting director Brighton Kanyama said their organisation would like to see land deals that leave all parties happy.
“When the land deals are done in mutual agreement with the blessings of local authorities, I see nothing wrong,” said Kanyama.
“However, it becomes a problem when one of the parties feels hard done. As Camera, we want people to do their businesses that leave both parties satisfied.”
Kanyama warned home seekers from buying land from land barons.
l This article was published with the support of USAid, Internews and Advancing Rights in Southern Africa.
