Vice President, Guy Scott, says he will soon issue a circular to all councils in the country that will control the conversion of traditional land into private ownership.
Dr Scott said this will be done to stop the indiscriminate sale of land by councils and traditional leaders to investors at the expense of their subjects.
The Vice President said this in Siavonga on Thursday when he met Chief Chipepo, Chief Simamba and Chief Sinadambwe of the Tonga speaking people of Siavonga.
Dr Scott said it is disheartening that chiefs, who are supposed to be custodians of traditional land on behalf of the people, are the ones disadvantaging their subjects.
The Vice President said according to the Zambian laws, chiefs do not own land but are merely trustees on behalf of their subjects and should, therefore, not sell land.
He cited Siavonga as one area where local people have been denied access to the lake because most of the land on the lake shore has been turned into private property.
Dr Scott said the PF government wants to protect the wellbeing of ordinary people and will not tolerate a situation where people are not benefitting from their God-given land.
He told the chiefs and the council in Siavonga to resolve the issue of access to the lake so that local people can also utilize the lake for their benefit.
And Chief Chipepo said the matter of chiefs selling land can be resolved by engaging the traditional leaders through the House of Chiefs.
Chief Chipepo said as leaders, chiefs welcome dialogue with government aimed at serving the people better.
Good move. This should be able to stop the chiefs from giving away acres of land corruptly.
It will be a big mistake to give too much power over land to our chiefs in this modern day and age because they are inherently corrupt and selfish and most of them are just ignorant villagers.
Chiefs’ powers to alienate land ought to be curtailed. To start with foreigners should be barred from buying land from chiefs. Rather forest reserves that have been so severely encroached and devasted by charcoal burners is what should be offered to Zambians and foreigners as JV ventures with govt entities (FD/ZAWA/ZAFFICO) for forest related businesses such as ranching, private game reverves, bee keeping/honey prodution. This is the only practical way forest reseves will be preserved. We need to think ouside the box of the colonial statutes that we inherited in order preserve/ save our forests/land
VERY VERY IMPORTANT. You can not have Feudalism in this age. We do not want War Lords who are above state authority
Good observation mr vp, its very sad to create a situation similar to that of south Africa where local indigenous people are confined to very small unproductive pieces of land and cannot move freely because investors and whites have taken and fenced all the fetile land. Acess to Zambia ‘s natural resources like water bodies must be enjoyed by all zambians . Arrest this problem before it leads to land wrangles
Why not say it after you have acted rather than before.
But the state (ministers) has been selling mining contracts to foreigners for years in chiefs areas while chiefs looked on. In place of thinking of them as ignorant villagers, think of them as proteges of the state. And they learned well!