GOVERNMENT’S ambitious programme to issue title deeds to residents in urban areas and at farms is progressing at slower pace than anticipated.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa promised to dole out more than 11 000 title deeds to Epworth residents a month before the August 2023 polls.
Cabinet later endorsed the Kwangu/Ngakwami Presidential Title Deeds Programme, which was expected to provide the financial and technical support required for the issuance of the documents.
A title deed is a formal document legally defining how a property is allotted by an authority, owned and transferral by the holder.
During Wednesday’s question and answer session in Parliament, Local Government minister Daniel Garwe attributed the delay to the complex nature of the regularisation programme.
“We need to ensure that we do all the processes,” Garwe said.
“So, you needed people to go on the ground, to physically identify the occupants and match them with what Epworth local authority has in its records, then you go through all the other processes so that at the end of the day, we have a title deed that speaks to the actual person who is supposed to be there.”
Justice minister and leader of government business in Parliament, Ziyambi Ziyambi, said the regularisation exercise was not an overnight event.
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“When we started, we were very excited, we thought it was easy, but giving a title, it is a document that confers rights to the exclusion of everyone else, hence we had to be thorough,” Ziyambi said.
“What the Minister of Local Government was saying is we need to ensure that we do all the processes.
“However, it is not a straightforward issue that you could say we can rush it and do it in no time.”
Ziyambi said they intended to decentralise the exercise to provinces.
“So, indeed, we started with a pilot, now we know what is required of us, we are going to decentralise. Very soon, you will see us putting offices in high-density areas, in several locations, inviting people so that we can get information about them, then we will start processing it,” he said.
“I am sure you heard the Minister of Local Government appealing to local authorities not to manipulate the system because we want the actual people to benefit.”
It has since emerged that Mnangagwa did not distribute title deeds during his campaign trail, but deeds of grant.
A deed of grant is issued when development of key infrastructure has been completed, including roads, sewage and water reticulation systems, among others.
Rights to property are granted by the State to the beneficiary in question and the State can include any conditions precedent to the transference of the rights.
Conditions can include land use and other related matters.
Zanu PF has always used land as a campaign tool every time the nation goes to elections.
Critics argue that it is the same reason the government was in the past not given 99-year leases to beneficiaries of the land reform programme, making them perennial tenants on the land they occupy.
