Bill 13 is a double-edged sword, a danger
By Hicks Sikazwe
THE current proposal to amend the law to give the lands registrar power to cancel such a vital document as a title deed, once allowed, will not benefit the people of Zambia.
What is strange is that there is nothing wrong with the current Lands and Deeds Registry Act. But there is everything wrong in trying to get the law changed to give power to a registrar to deny or cancel someone’s title deed.
Going by the public reaction even through a number of submissions to the Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture and Natural Resources, if implemented this is a dangerous legislation that will disadvantage the people it ought to serve.
Since the advent of democracy in the 1990s the country has seen a rise in vindictive politics, especially among political parties. Whenever there is change a governing party immediately declares those in opposition as enemies. What would stop a cadre registrar being ordered to cancel title deeds of opponents or denying them owning land all together?
Let us look at two scenerios. In 1996 second republican president Frederick Chiluba introduced a policy in which sitting tenants in council houses mine and other parastatals were allowed to buy houses. Thousands of Zambians benefited from that decision.
Other than that his government relaxed rigidities in land allocation. Again thousands of Zambians procured plots where they built houses to live in or rent out.
The impact of that facility was immediate; poverty alleviation. Before that decision was made retirees were the major victims of destitution and early deaths simply because after leaving work there was nowhere to retire to as not many of them had access to company loans to allow them to construct retirement homes.
In many cases such retirees died early because of stress caused by homelessness. In Zambia the pension system does not favour employees after the tour of duty. Retirement payments take long to be proffered or never come out at all until someone dies.
But after the government offered them to buy houses the situation has changed. Not many of them slide into destitution because while waiting for pension funds the house can be floated for rent and the family moves into a smaller one. Rentals coming from there would go along way to help people survive.
Though it is not easy to get statistics deaths have drastically reduced among retirees that have obtained houses to retire to.
The second scenario is that in Zambia land allocation is not only cumbersome but also mired in complicated processes. For example, when one buys a plot where to build a house, the title deed is never issued immediately. What has been happening is that the applicant asks for permission from the local authority to begin construction while the process of getting the title is underway.
By the time the title is issued the house will have been completed and the family has moved in. In short for one to obtain a title deed for a property it has been taking months, if not years.
We cannot deny that Zambia, like other African countries, has been a victim of vindictive politics. Imagine in the two scenarios cited above, a new government comes in power and appoints a cadre and partisan registrar with powers to cancel or deny applicants title deeds.
Then the party in power wakes up one day and declares to hunt down all opposition party land owners and orders the registrar to cancel the deeds or deny them one. Today if the United Party for National Development (UPND) declared that all those people who bought houses under Chiluba as Patriotic Front (PF) members and further decides that they hence should have their title deeds cancelled. What would happen?
If the UPND wanted they could also hunt down members of the civil society, journalists, church leaders and opposition party members that are against the establishment but who own property and get them to lose their title deeds. The result would be chaos. That is exactly how dangerous, if allowed the amending this law would be.
When Chiluba decided to sell off houses to sitting tenants he did not look at faces, party affiliation but the major qualification was that one simply needed to be a sitting tenant. Yet if Chiluba wanted he would have first evicted all suspected UNIP members from housing units and let MMD zealots occupy them before putting them on offer to sitting tenants. But he did not do that.
Several submissions that have been going to the select committee give more examples of how not good this kind of law would be to Zambians if allowed to take the day. In short this is a bad and retrogressive law.
What is even frightening is that why it should get the urgency now when there is nothing that benefits the people once reviewed.
In the example on houses for sitting tenants if the registrar decides to cancel the deed, what happens to the structure which is there? Will the victim get enough compensation to replace that property?
As things stand there is enough regulation to deal with a title deed not properly obtained. The new proposal is not only dangerous but can easily be abused to punish innocent citizens. What the government needs to do is to improve land allocation processes and work out policies to guarantee security of tenure. The current proposal if allowed will not provide the needed security. Government needs to devise a system to avail title deeds even within a month or less as opposed to waiting for years. This is possible in a digital world.
Once implemented, this is a law which will provide a similar atmosphere as in the colonial days when it was difficult for indigenous families to own land. But more crucial this kind of thinking is a complete return to One party state when the government had a strong hand to control everything even property ownership.
The other danger is that the people who are in power today they can come and lose property when a government changes and a new registrar is appointed. This is clearly similar to a double-edged sword. You may think you are safe today but may not be as safe tomorrow. Good laws must benefit the people but not disadvantage them.
Hicks Sikazwe is author of Zambia’s Fallback Presidents, Wasted Years, and Voters in Shadows. A former Deputy Editor–in–Chief of the Times of Zambia, he is Communications and Media Affairs Advocate based in Ndola. Comments;0955/0966929611 or hpsikazwe@gmal.com
