Source: The National

CUSTOMARY land ownership in the country has been reduced from 97% to 86% because of the number of Special Agriculture and Business Leases issued since the 1990s, Prime Minister Peter O’Neill says.

He said the 77 SABLs referred to the Commission of Inquiry for investigation involved around 5.2 million hectares of land.

“The SABL was not meant to be a permanent alienation of customary land,” he told reporters on Wednesday. “Initially, SABLs were issued for less than 40 years but without any apparent rationale or proper justification, the duration of SABLs was increased to 99 years in many instances.”

The Government plans to cancel all such leases obtained illegally.

He regretted that after spending K15 million on the commission of inquiry, he has received reports from only two of the three commissioners.

“And the final reports of the two commissioners covered only 42 of 77 SABLs the three were required to investigate,” he said.

Cabinet this week approved the cancelling of SABLs and repealing of the Land Act “to implement the recommendations of the commission of inquiry into the SABLs”.

The two commissioners’ findings indicated the following:

• Systematic abuse of authority by certain officers was commonplace in various departments and agencies investigated;
• Undue political pressure from the Prime Minister was exerted on government officials;
• There was widespread and systematic breach of various laws;
• There was no systematic procedure in the Department of Lands and Physical Planning to guide the processing and granting of SABLs;
• Government policies pertaining to land were unclear;
• Confused state of affairs existed – certain officers including senior ones did not know who had power to exercise certain authority such as the issuing of Certificate of Alienability and whether it was necessary at all;
• Lack of cooperation between key agencies involved with the issuing and regulating of SABLs; and,
• Fraudulent practices were discovered in numerous cases.