WHILE the principle of land reform in Zimbabwe was primarily to address the skewed legacy of colonial land ownership imbalances, the late former president Robert Mugabe and his family engaged in greedy accumulation of farms establishing themselves as the new landed aristocracy.

Owen Gagare

By the time of his death on 6 September 2019, Mugabe had became a top land baron with 24
farms in violation of his regime’s one-man-one-farm policy.

Some chiefs in the Greater Accra Region have threatened to demonstrate against the government over lands that were seized from them by the state.

The aggrieved chiefs threatened a 4-day protest asking the government to immediately release to them lands that were confiscated by the state years ago.

Main photo: Cambodian farmer and land rights activist Oum Samorl (photo: Ridan Sun)

Cambodian farmer Oum Samorl and her family lost their farm to a corporate land grab 15 years ago. They have never stopped feeling the loss, especially during the pandemic.

Oum Samorl remembers the day in June 2006 when tractors invaded her family’s farm in Cambodia’s Pailin province. 

The first of 10 Mondulkiri public officials implicated in illegal land grabbing in the province has been transferred from his position — a warning to others, according to a government spokesperson, but for local rights monitors a sign of continuing impunity over imprisonable crimes.

An inter-ministerial working group concluded an investigation into illegal encroachment of protected forests in Mondulkiri in late August, identifying 10 governmental officials allegedly involved in stealing state land.

One of the ugliest features of the modern world is the exploitation of natural resources for private gain irrespective of its consequences for the environment and the larger community, especially the poor majority.

Around 1,000 villagers from three Cambodian provinces blocked the road leading to the Land Ministry in Phnom Penh on Monday to demand government help in resolving disputes over land taken by private companies and politically connected businesspeople, sources in the country said.

Protesters from Koh Kong, Svay Rieng, and Tbong Khmum provinces held up photos of Prime Minister Hun Sen and his wife, and Cambodian King Sihamoni and the Queen Mother, as they launched their appeal, but were refused assistance by Ministry officials and left at the end of the day with no promises of help.

Four years ago, Phu Thap Boek -- a popular mountainous attraction in Phetchabun province -- became synonymous with the success of the military regime in reclaiming forest land, or the Tuang Kuen Phuen Pa campaign when the state took back forest land from illegal occupants.

(main photo: Selangor Menteri Besar Amirudin Shari says the factory building will be demolished within the next few months)

KUALA LUMPUR: The Selangor government will instruct the factory responsible for the pollution of Sungai Selangor, which led to water disruptions to over 1.2 million people in the Klang Valley, to vacate the land it occupies.

At a press conference, Selangor Menteri Besar Amirudin Shari said the factory in the Sungai Gong Industrial Area in Rawang had already been closed.

A white former Zimbabwean commercial farmer says most landowners who were dispossessed of their farms during the country's violent land grab programme post-2000 would prefer financial compensation as opposed to land offers by government.

Government recently inked a US$3,5 deal with farmer representative groups in what would see the use of the giant figure to compensate former landowners for infrastructural improvements they made on the properties.

THE minister of urban and rural development, Erastus Uutoni, has applied to the High Court to evict about 2 000 people who allegedly grabbed unserviced municipal land at Okahandja.

Uutoni and the Municipality of Okahandja are asking the court to authorise the eviction of people who allegedly occupied some parts of the town's unserviced land illegally.