Zim power mongers, please bury the hatchet and fix the country

The Zimbabwe agricultural sector is emerging from its lowest ebb from a decade long of agrarian reform which left concerned stakeholders in a standoff. The reallocation of land value has not accompanied physical redistribution of land which has led government to incur the costs of land reform due to insufficient modes of cost recovery.
Today, the country needs a comprehensive and sustainable solution that will settle the land question once and for all Zimbabweans and most importantly reinvigorate and stimulate sustainability, efficiency and growth in the agricultural sector.
The once valuable agriculture land is now a dead asset, as there are no property rights, no incentive to invest, has no collateral value and cannot be used as access to private financial schemes.
More importantly the land has no security of tenure rendering farmers no reason to protect and use land sustainably.
Speaking to The Commercial Farmers Union President Deon Theron at his offices The Business Diary sought to establish what such organisations are doing to restore the lost pride of the Zimbabwean land.
"The solution must be SMART-specific Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time bound," said Theron citing that the solution must benefit and be attractive to all the partners in this equation (i.e the government of Zimbabwe, Donors and all framers)
The solution should encourage the expertise to return or skills transfer to new farmers and stimulation of the Zimbabwean economy.
More crucially this should in whole be within bounds of international law principles and legal Precedents to foster local and foreign investor confidence.
Zimbabweans (both white and black) should be weary and should not expect anyone to solve this problem, not SADC or any other western or eastern bloc member be it former colonial master or advisors whose knowledge is limited to what they are fed by the media.
All agricultural groupings and formations need to play an active role in a partnership with government and donors in facilitating the solution.
It is imperative  for parties involved in this dispute to realise that there are two parties which are aggrieved hence the need for arbitration to compensate the parties; The Black farmer is the first aggrieved part from colonial injustice and the White famer being the latest culprit from the agrarian reform.
According to pundits, there is a finite Global figure which will extinguish not only the dispute on the land and compensation issues but also give Zimbabwe an appropriate realistic value in line with regional agricultural land markets.
Many will ponder what  is the Global figure for the land; factors such as land, improvements, disturbances and losses and the blanket figure to cover legal fees, costs of valuation, moving, and lost crops.
"However, human rights abuse or criminal damages should not be included in this final amount," added Theron.
According to Theron, Farmers need to use land as a tradable asset to secure financing which forms the basis of a productive and motivational institute. This therefore calls for an establishment for a land bank whose sole existence will be to revive the sector through donor funding and trading in finances with farmers taking the burden away from government.
"New farmers should be able to apply to land bank for 'soft loans' to finance purchase of farms and loans to begin or continue agriculture production on an agreed cost recovery scheme with the financer.
Communal farmers must be given access to finance from the land bank under the new system thereby empowering them with a secure tenure system.
As much as the agrarian reform has come all this far suggestions are that there is need for properly structured resettlement scheme to cater for all farmers wishing to farm.  These structures include surveys, issue of title deeds, research and extension programmes and skills transfer/mentor schemes.
It is critical that certain safeguards be in place to encourage investor confidence and minimize any possibility of corruption.
In conclusion whatever solution that the parties should come out with should ensure a win-win situation for all parties involved with the new farmer being given prominence in all decisions to safe guard the future against such occurrences.