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It should be noted that when the land was acquired in 1990, the legal title could not have been transferred unless the buyer obtained an official certificate to the effect that the land was not subject to contemplated redistribution.

Note also that nobody now has a fee simple in possession to any of the confiscated lands. This means that the persons in possession of the land have no capacity to give title to any purchaser or mortgagor. This means that any settlor has no power to mortgage or hypothocate as security for borrowing.

Cultivation of veldt land requires major expenditure of borrowed money for fertilization, ploughing, planting, irrigating, tending and harvesting. Without the farmer having the ability to award title, no lender will advance a loan. This even if inflation was not in seven figure percentages.

I am stating the obvious to anyone who has cultivated veldt, prairie or outback land, but the obvious seems to have escaped the notice of Mugabe and his Zanu PF thugs.

Note also that even should the government award title deeds to those that it has settled upon the confiscated land, no lender could rely on a deed whose source is a government of thugs who might at any time, at whim and with impunity, again invade that land.

This is not a fanciful possibility. There have been instances of settlors having been placed upon the land, haveing started subsistence farming, put a season or more of work into it, and have had the land taken back when a Zanu PF cadre took a fancy to the land and decided that he wanted to become a gentleman farmer.

And let there be no doubt on why they are starving to death

“...when a Zanu PF cadre took a fancy to the land and decided that he wanted to become a gentleman farmer.”

More like “wanted to become a Cannibal King.”

That day’s coming for Zimbabwe.