MOVES by the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission to uncover in detail and then prevent the increasing irregular allocation of communal and State-owned farm land for urban housing are welcome as this is now becoming a major problem.
The illegal and irregular allocations are particularly prevalent on the outskirts of major cities and towns and in the vicinity of rural business centres. It is not just unplanned urban settlement, but also causes many problems for the real farmers.
A ZACC team in Matabeleland South last week heard about houses suddenly appearing in the middle of pastures and other such irregular developments. These houses are usually built by people who do not belong to the surrounding community and who are not farming or in the farm-related businesses.
The unplanned and illegal encroachment by urban dwellers seeking larger stands has been particularly noticeable along the eastern, southern and western borders of Harare Metropolitan, with village heads and others in the surrounding communal lands allocating "pieces of land", for a fee, and land barons moving into State land acquired during land resettlement.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with urban centres expanding, or with new urban centres being established in rural district councils, and the growth of rural development will require more of these modest centres to provide the services that farmers need and the bases for rural industrialisation.
But they need to be planned, and properly planned, and need to avoid severe urban sprawl over land, with zero in the way of urban services, such as roads, water supply and sewers or the necessary electricity network.
Large plots with zero services on pastures or on land allocated for farming simply destroy the livelihood of farmers without compensation, and create problems that will take years to sort out.
All local authorities are supposed to have prepared new master plans, or in many cases their first master plan, by last weekend.
Many are still finishing these off and in many cases the master plans will require public debate and a fair amount of adjustment to meet planning conditions before they can become the guides they are supposed to be for a local authority.
But once the first drafts are in place then movement can be reasonably rapid in getting the details fixed, sorting out what unplanned development has already taken place and seeing what can be incorporated and eventually regularised and what has to be undone, and making it clear how future development must flow.
Sometimes provincial and local authority boundaries may well have to change, or at least panning bodies set up that can ensure that development along both sides of a boundary do fit together.
Harare Metropolitan province, originally hived off Mashonaland East to group Harare City Council, Chitungwiza Municipality and Epworth Local Board, has for most purposes now incorporated Ruwa Local Board, so that development of the formal metropolitan area at least fits together, although original plans for some sort of greenbelt separating the units have been lost.
We now have the backyards of some houses in Ruwa, for example, touching the backyards of houses in Harare, which makes planning and administration a lot harder. And this is just for the legal and planned development.
On top of this, Goromonzi Rural District Council is having to deal with a swathe of severe and largely unplanned urban development along its western and southern borders, plus the land-baron Caledonia estate where there was some outline planning, but zero services.
There are similar problems in the south, between Chitungwiza and Seke communal lands, where housing just moves over the boundary and town planning disappears as houses, built and owned by urban dwellers, appear in allocated land in the communal farming land.
There is more planning in the west and north of Harare, where a lot of the border land is State land or private land, so it has been possible to enforce some of the basic town planning requirements for new suburban development.
The creation of housing co-operatives, usually the entry point for land barons, was far less common in these areas and so there has been more formal development by land developers.
But the two rural district councils of Zvimba and Mazowe are going to have to keep a sharp eye on what is happening and there master plans, while perhaps taking into account the need for urban development, also have to ensure that it is not only done properly but that the development connects with any bordering development in Harare Metropolitan. This accounts for everything from highways to the sewers.
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The Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development, and the Ministry of Local Government and Public Works, are now flexing their muscle to prevent unauthorised use of State or farming land and to ensure that proper planning will be done.
Even allocation or transfers of State land within urban authorities is suspended, while the planning is sorted out.
Unless we want solid swathes of concrete stretching for dozens of kilometres, the present urban policy of tight development and far higher densities will have to be enforced.
Unfortunately the term "high density" has been reserved for lower income housing, although some of the cluster housing now being developed, and even the ultra high-income Borrowdale Brooke, show that there is no necessary connection between density and value.
The encroachment into the surrounding farm lands will simply mean that this solid swathe of concrete will become the norm, unless it is stopped now. ZACC need to be backed as they move against dishonest traditional leadership and land barons.
