Hundreds of villagers are facing an unproductive agricultural season as they make a second legal attempt to access farming land in the hands of ethanol producer Green Fuel.
In December, about 140 families in Chipinge, near the Mozambique border, made an unsuccessful urgent application to the high court. With the support of Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) they are now filing a fresh application for access to the land as planting season looms.
Villagers said bottlenecks in the justice system had become a stumbling block. "We feel let down by the system," said Joseph Sithole of Chisumbanje.
"People elsewhere are busy preparing their fields, yet we have no access to our own ancestral farming lands. We are poor, we have no money to pay for lawyers and fight Green Fuel. If it wasn't for human rights lawyers, all hope would be lost.
"Right now we have no means of survival. The land [under dispute] used to be our source of livelihood. Those were our cotton and maize fields, and any form of delay in finalising this matter will impoverish us."
Green Fuel is a partnership between businessman Billy Rautenbach's Macdom, Rating Investment and the government Agricultural and Rural Development Authority. It was founded in 2008 and aims to produce sufficient ethanol from sugar cane to make fuel imports unnecessary.
According to Green Fuel's website, the company owns more than 40,000ha but community rights activist group Platform for Youth Development (PYD) said the purchase had displaced villagers in Chisumbanje, Chinyamukwakwa and Matikwa.
PYD director Claris Madhuku said a total of 2,961 households had been compensated with 0.5ha each and this had divided the community, "with some politically connected becoming land barons at the expense of the vulnerable".
Passmore Nyakureba from ZLHR said the legal issues were complex. "You have the local authority, Chipinge Rural District Council, claiming the land does not belong to the affected communities but to a state enterprise, the Agricultural and Rural Development Authority.
Right now we have no means of survival. The land [under dispute] used to be our source of livelihood. Those were our cotton and maize fields, and any form of delay in finalising this matter will impoverish us.
— Joseph Sithole, one of the affected
"Communities claim the land, and they have occupied it since time immemorial. How do we fill this gap? The government needs to come up with a win-win situation between the investor and the locals.
"However, the government and its lower tiers are plainly complicit. They are on the same side with the investor."
Constitutional lawyer Admark Moyo said the justice system should protect communities against corporates.
"The Chisumbanje land dispute exposes weaknesses in our litigation process. It raises serious concerns about the mechanisms one can use to ensure that businesses are held accountable for human rights abuse," he said.
"Corporates have enough money to hire the best legal minds, yet villagers cannot afford representation. This case happened in Chipinge but the villagers have to travel to Mutare [200km away] to access the high court. So distance is already a handicap.
"The process might take years to finalise and the complainants might be dead before the matter is brought to finality. This leaves the villagers with limited options, and the only thing they can do is merely to withdraw their social licence and make it difficult for the corporates to operate."
Officials from the ministry of lands declined to comment on the matter.
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