SENIOR chief Mukuni of the Toka Leya people in Livingstone on Friday warned that signs were on the wall that Zambians would in future grab land from foreigners.

Speaking when lands minister Gladys Nyirongo and her entourage paid a courtesy call on him at his palace, chief Mukuni said if allocation of land to foreigners was not controlled, a situation would arise where local people would start grabbing land from them in an unusual manner.

“Signs are on the wall in South Africa and Zimbabwe where locals have started grabbing land from foreigners. If we give too much land to outsiders and yet in South Africa and Zimbabwe people are getting back their land, we will find a situation here also where we start grabbing the land from the outsiders,� Chief Mukuni said.
He said there should be a safeguard measure put in place to empower locals to own land as their equity.

Chief Mukuni asked lands commissioner Fighton Sichone to incorporate promises made by foreign investors in title deeds.
He said this was to control investors who make promises before getting their titles and turn around after they had been issued with title deeds, since in the title there were no such provisions.
And Sichone agreed with chief Mukuni, saying his observations were concerns that many chiefs around the country had submitted to the Ministry of Lands.

He said any title that was given to an investor without the consent of the chief would be nullified.
He said chiefs should also take into account the rights of their subjects when giving land to investors.

“Traditional leaders have submitted their complaints to the Ministry of Lands that the 99 year lease given to investors was too long. We need to look at the tenant farm labour issues in the new lands policy,� Sichone said.

He said it was irregular that the title deeds could supersede people who had stayed in that given land for a long time.
Surveyor General, Dan Mubanga, said he had written to the Ministry of Local Government and Housing to include stakeholders such as chiefs and his office when coming up with district and chiefs’ boundaries which had caused a lot of controversies in the country.

Mubanga complained that the Electoral Commission of Zambia was not consulting them when conducting delimitation exercises.
Chief Mukuni noted that the 1958 chiefs boundary maps and the current district demarcations had increased land wrangles among chiefs because chiefs were not involved in the exercises.