A synopsis of the Chisumbanje Land Dispute

Abstract

The land dispute in Chisumbanje pitting Green fuel, Agricultural Rural Development Authority, Chipinge Rural District Council and the villagers of Chisumbanje and Chinyamukwakwa is real and has been raging for a decade since 2008.

Discussions and debate have achieved very little with the main reasons linked to the nature of the business model as well as various conflicting interests and personalities involved.

Despite stakeholders raising genuine and serious concerns to treat the land dispute with urgency, most of the effort has been in futility therefore raising the following questions for dialogue, that this forum can actively participate.

What kind of relationship exists between Green fuel Pvt Ltd, ARDA, Chipinge Rural District Council and the government of Zimbabwe?

To what extent is the government of Zimbabwe involved in the monitoring of the Chisumbanje ethanol project?

Where does the local community fit in this decade long land dispute?

What has been the role of civic society organisations in raising awareness including lobbying and advocacy?

Who are the main players with business interests in this project?

Background to the Project

The fuel crisis of 2006 – 2008 prompted the Zimbabwean government’s interest in biofuel production as an alternative to fossil fuel with Zimbabwe adopting a Brazilian national ethanol program but with little success. This led to the government through ARDA engaging Billy Rautenbauch to establish an ethanol production project in Chisumbanje on a Build Operate and Transfer arrangement (BOT) in 2008. Chisumbanje was a preferred location for the ethanol project due to its favourable biophysical resources and especially the rich Ndowoyo soil. Green fuel, then operating as Macdom Pvt Ltd subsequently began working on the project in 2009, with the project officially commencing in June 2010.By then, the project was operating within the ARDA boundaries that was being leased to Chipinge Rural District Council (5 112 hectares). 

The project was bargained at a political level to act as a sanction buster by the ZANU PF government post 2008 election dispute. Since the project was a product of a political bargaining process, it ignored the human rights implications of the ethanol project. It is important to take note that Green fuel, ARDA and the government of Zimbabwe entered a marriage of convenience that now complicates their jurisdictions and responsibilities which remains guided more by the politics of the business than the other way around.

Project Description

• The project received a national project status due to its strategic role to the economic challenges facing Zimbabwe (Mutambara Report 18th of September 2012)

• The project scaled from a Build Operate and Transfer (BOT) to a Joint Venture (JV) business model. The JV model now involves the government of Zimbabwe as a business partner (Zimbabwe is open for business).

• The project is scheduled to use 10 000 hectares of land from Middle Sabi and 45 000 hectares from Chisumbanje when fully operational by 2020

• The project has directly affected 1754 Households (1060 from Chisumbanje and 694 from Chinyamukwakwa) as per minimalist research provided by the Mutambara report in September 2012

• The ethanol project is growing sugarcane for ethanol in Chisumbanje and at Middle Sabi,

• The project has so far utilised approximately 14000 hectares of land in Chisumbanje.

Challenges

• Breach of customary and communal land tenure arrangements. 

This large scale agro – based investment adversely affected food security in Chisumbanje and Chinyamukwakwa due to encroachment on communal land by the project. The encroachment into communal land heightened concerns over potential conflict between the project and villagers configured around food security, land protection and social justice. 

According to Borras and Franco (2012) a ‘land grab’ is the power to control large quantities of land and resources for capital accumulation. The project signals a loss in access to land by peasants and the common villagers of Chisumbanje and Chinyamukwakwa.

• Absence of national policy guiding the biofuel to reflect national importance. 

In 2012, the inter – ministerial committee of 11 cabinet Ministers recommended that there be a joint district implementation committee set up to include the Council Chairperson, all local chiefs, the local Member of Parliament, two ward Councillors, two workers union representatives and four representatives of 7 the displaced and affected households (two from Chisumbanje and two from Chinyamukwakwa). The District Administrator (D.A) was to be the chairperson of the committee. However, after the 2013 harmonised elections, the committee was made defunct at the instigation of the local member of the house of Assembly in collaboration with the then Minister of Energy and Power Development, Dzikamai Mavhaire. 

The 2014 Portfolio Committee on Youth, Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment report to the national assembly, reinforced the need to have a DEPIC platform. Other local and international organisations like Fund for Development and Partnership in Africa (FEPA), Solifonds, Transparency International Zimbabwe (TIZ), Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR), Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association (ZELA), Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP), Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition (CiZC) and Platform for Youth Development (PYD) captured the community sentiments on the lack of an engagement platform. Take note that the last DEPIC meeting sat on the 10th of September 2013 before it was resuscitated on the 19th of October 2018. Green fuel remains adamant and involved in serious lobbying to undermine the platform so that the project continues to operate without monitoring.

• Misrepresentation of facts and absence of government commitment to reign in on Green fuel. 

Green fuel has always claimed through its websites and a well-managed interface with the media that it has a profound social corporate responsibility structure that is using millions of dollars to serve the local community and the nation at large (Green fuel claims to have used $11million to develop land for the community  https://www.herald.co.zw/a-sit-down-with-conrad-rautenbach-from-green-fuel/). 

They claim to have drilled boreholes, rehabilitated local roads, involved in entrepreneurial projects with women, reforestation and irrigation farming. This has not been satisfactorily implemented as some of the projects suffered still birth. The Vimbo-Hope project has failed to bring any confidence to the local community. The Green fuel projects are only for grandstanding because they are opaque and run by a small clique of political actors who are bent on proving political points than serving the community. Only the library and technology centre exist but the infrastructure is not in commensurate with the community expectations.

• The role of ARDA being used to perpetuate colonial injustices. 

There is a claim that the land which is earmarked for the Green fuel project expansion belongs to ARDA as long back as the 1960s during the Rhodesian government of Ian Douglas Smith. This narrative that the disputed land area was then ratified by the Zimbabwean government in 1981 after independence is not supported by any documentation. We are being told that over the years, ARDA was not able to court investors until 2008 when this ethanol project was then negotiated. The information provided to sustain the argument in defence of ARDA, has not been backed by any valid empirical data. 

PYD has made an undertaking to verify the argument and found most of the facts vague and self-contradicting. This paper seeks to argue that, the talk to displace the villagers of Chisumbanje and Chinyamukwakwa from their right to communal land is not justified. The affected communities have a rich oral history and artefacts linking them to the land as far back as the 1900s. If the new dispensation government of Zimbabwe fails to protect the villagers, the government reputation will be worse of than that of the colonial masters who were brutal and ruthless.

• Compliance with Recommendations

Green fuel tends to ignore and dismiss authoritative reports and recommendations on its operation. On the 24th of September 2012 EMA opened a docket charging Green fuel of operating without an Environmental Impact Assessment certificate. While Green fuel claims to have submitted an EIA document to EMA on the 22nd of June 2011, there are allegations from EMA that the application was incomplete with  Green fuel preferring paying fines than complying. Recommendations from an inter – ministerial committee, Cabinet and parliament that are well documented, remain outstanding.

• Opportunities that have been overshadowed by alleged corruption

The Green fuel project offers a lot of opportunities that have been dogged by poor monitoring, political bickering and alleged corruption. The project has been presented as capable of offering the following:

• Contribution of power into the national grid. The 2017 statistics provided by Green fuel claims that they contributed 33 000 Megawatt of power into the national grid (Herald 15 February 2018-Interview with Conrad Rautenbauch)

• Contribution of ethanol to Zimbabwe. In 2017 Green fuel contributed 56 million of ethanol as compared to 40 million in 2016. Green fuel produces ethanol which is between 15 and 20 percent mandatory blending (Herald 15 February 2018-Interview with Conrad Rautenbauch)

• Provision of employment to Zimbabweans. There is varying statistics of how many people are employed by the project. While the company has not been consistent with the actual employment figures, where at times it talks of over 5 000 and other times it states that it has over 3000 with 8 000 when the company is fully operational.  We do admit that they provide employment but according to PYD records, the correct figures are +/- 2000

Efforts made by the Platform for Youth Development to engage and talk

 Popularly elected community involving all stakeholders

 Monitoring human rights violation

 Seeking government intervention in terms of the policy pronouncements

 Confrontations (Demonstrations at the mill site and public resistance)

 Media advocacy

 Human rights training

 Litigation

 Community information dissemination

 Training on Nonviolence

The issues that have remained outstanding

 No clarification on the boundary

 Unfulfilled compensation

 No land audits and verification on complaints linked to beneficiaries

 No community share ownership trust

 No clear social responsibility thrust from the investment

 Negative impact on Women (School Dropouts, early Child Marriages, Prostitution, divorces due to increased levels of domestic violence, usurpation of traditional leadership power by political and partisan players, intervention by Green fuel in terms of conflicts related to the boundary disputes to weaken the stronger voices, disregard for community platforms meant to engage and talk)

 Increasing the beneficiary land size from 0.5 ha to 2ha. 

The opportunities for Social Dialogue

 Engaging with the new government

 Clarifying the voice and demands by the community

 Advocacy on the impact of the project on the livelihoods of the villagers and small-scale farmers

 Legal intervention to seek clarification on the boundary

Conclusion and Way Forward

This paper seeks to make various recommendations guided by the fact that there is need for peaceful co – existence between the community, the business and the government. Having been involved in this dispute for a decade, we are strongly convinced that the central government must play a bigger role than the other stakeholders whose role is simple to provide pressure and highlight areas that needs attention

 That Green fuel stop any further expansion beyond the current land size, as it can still meet its projected ethanol production.

 That central government provide a framework for supervision aimed at monitoring and evaluating Green fuel social responsibilities.

 That an all stakeholder platform in the name of DEPIC be formally accepted and also increase its community quota.

 That civic society actors who have been working on the land dispute in Chisumbanje be mobilised to converge and proffer various levels of intervention to assist the affected villagers in Chisumbanje and Chinyamukwakwa.

This paper was presented by Claris Madhuku at a Land Accountability Indaba in Mutare on the 1st of November 2018.