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agricultural areas and assisting them to develop farm plots demarcated and assigned to them was
viewed as the most realistic remedy to unemployment. It would result in greater self-employment in
the agricultural sector and reduce unemployment at the national level.
Settlement schemes were also attractive to the government as a favored policy tool aimed at
increasing agricultural production, diversifying the economy away from copper mining, and improving
the living conditions of some part of the rural farming population. The existence of large amounts of
formerly European-owned (and in some cases, developed) land as well as other vast unutilized areas
for redistribution made this policy tool an easy one to implement.
A review of the government objectives for settlement programs from independence to 1991
and those of the present government shows they are largely the same. The objectives of the previous
government were to:
► provide people the opportunity to settle permanently in the best agricultural areas available in
the provinces, and to enable the farmers if they so wished to obtain leasehold title to their
holdings;
► allow already permanently settled family farmers in some provinces where the population
pressures have increased to have the opportunity of acquiring more suitable mixed farming
units, where increased production of crops and livestock could take place without detriment
to the land;
► overcome the problems created by the flooding of the Gwembe Valley in Southern province;
► provide opportunities in selected areas to growers to participate in the production of specific
crops such as tobacco, coffee, and sugar cane;
► survey, plan, and demarcate areas of non-State Land into commercial farming units and have
these areas declared State Lands on which people, particularly those members of the public
who are unemployed and wish to take up agriculture as a means of livelihood, can settle; and
► reinforce, indirectly, the program clearing large tracts of land to overcome tsetse fly
infestations by settlement of selected areas cleared of the fly.
The present government also views settlement as a vital program, and it has expressed a
commitment to continuation of its implementation and support. In an effort to consolidate control and
bring about better coordination, responsibility for running the programs has now been placed in the
office of the vice president. The day to day administration is under the Department of Resettlement
in the vice president's office.
Like the previous government, the present government objectives for the settlement programs
are both economic and political. They include:
► creating opportunities for those retrenched from public service and others that are
unemployed;
► bringing more than 250,000 hectares of arable idle land under cultivation throughout the
country, thus increasing household and national food security;
► creating new focal points for rural investment and rural development; and
► bringing about more efficient utilization of social services in rural areas through the creation
of viable settlements as opposed to unplanned scattered settlements.