Story by Oleen Ndori
PRESIDENT Dr Emmerson Mnangagwa has sworn in the new Minister of Lands and Rural Development, Honourable Vangelis Haritatos, along with commissioners to the Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission.
The swearing-in ceremony took place this Wednesday at the State House, where Honourable Haritatos officially assumed his new role following his appointment. This comes after the demerger from the Ministry of Agriculture, Mechanisation and Water Resources Development led by Dr Anxious Masuka.
Honourable Haritatos says his portfolio aims to ensure land development as well as the successful implementation of the Presidential Title Deeds programme, which is a key cornerstone of the rural development agenda.
“In the coming weeks, I am going to do a very quick audit and stock take of the land reform itself, in the sense that it is time now to proclaim that land reform is over, once and for all. Moving from there, we do not have a clear public policy. We intend to do a very detailed national land policy that is fully accountable, that’s fully transparent, that takes into consideration all the quotas, all the directives, all the policies that our ministry really needs to look into.
“We need to move our farmers towards the new title deed, which is the end story. We need to incentivise our farmers, we need to sit down as a ministry to ensure that the land now moves away from being an offer letter to being a title deed that is bankable, a title deed that is transferable, a title deed that one can use as collateral to be able to access limited resources that are already there, so that they can ensure, as I mentioned, that production and productivity is at the forefront of you owning a piece of agricultural land.
Then, moving from there, we will be looking at rural development, which is a very exciting arm of the ministry. Rural development, as you all know, was started with the vision of His Excellency, who gave us, through the minister, Minister Masuka, the guidance to ensure that we have 35 000 bores in Zimbabwe. Through our policy, we went on to move that to targeting 35 000 village business units, so this is going to be at the forefront,” he said.
The President also swore in a tribunal to investigate High Court Judge Justice Never Katiyo. Retired Judge, Justice Mafios Cheda, was appointed chair of this tribunal.
“The tribunal aims to investigate the alleged wrongdoings by the Honourable Judge Katiyo. We have been appointed, three of us, as a tribunal, as a commission to sit and try to investigate and find out whether the allegations being made against him are true or false. And thereafter, we will submit our report to His Excellency, because it is his tribunal and the report goes to him,” he said.
Commissioners to the Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission were also sworn in and these include; Dr Dorothy Moyo, Mr Anele Ndebele, Ms Irene Sithole, Dr Tendai Charity Nhenga, Mr Dzikamai Madzimure and Mr Panganai Munkombwe.
