Digital Cadastres Facilitating Land Information Management

5. The Status of the Cadastre in Zimbabwe 
The cadastral system of Zimbabwe can be traced back to 1897 when the triangulation 
commenced (Kurwakumire and Chaminama, 2012; Philip et al., 1982). The system is based on the 
Roman-Dutch law as is the case of South Africa (Tjia and Coetzee, 2013) and is comprised of 
separate cadastral and deeds registry offices even though they are housed in the same building in the 
capital city, Harare. Land surveys are regulated by the Land Survey Act of 1979 while town 
planning processes are administered through the Regional Town and Country Planning Act of 1996. 
Municipalities are mandated to store, manage and maintain records of all land parcels within their 
jurisdictions but without deeds information. The DSG is the overall custodian of cadastral 
information in the country. It spearheads and coordinates its collection, maintenance, updating, 
availability and accessibility to different users. Registered land surveyors are legally permitted to 
perform cadastral work and sign survey diagrams and general plans produced thereafter. The 
diagrams need to be signed submitted for approval by the DSG who checks for consistency with the 
required quality of the surveys and diagrams before the diagrams can be availed for public use. 
Upon approval, the surveyor general endorses the submitted diagrams otherwise, the submitted 
portfolio of documents is returned to the surveyor. The cadastral survey is only approved after the 
required quality of the survey and documents is achieved. The majority of land surveys are carried 
out using total stations though there is scattered global navigation satellite system (GNSS) 
technology use (Kurwakumire and Chaminama, 2012). There are no guidelines for GNSS use for 
performing cadastral work and neither do guidelines for examining the surveys exist. GNSS surveys 
are based on survey-accuracy GPS techniques which require a base station and a rover operating 
simultaneously. The products submitted for approval are created in a digital environment using 

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survey and CAD software but have to be printed and submitted in hardcopy format. The Land 
Survey Act (1979) Regulations have not been amended regularly since 1979. The regulations are 
not technology driven, but rather, they restrict the technology for use in surveying and mapping and 
the lodgement of surveys. Currently, the regulations stipulate that surveys should be carried out by 
theodolite and electronic distance measurement instruments (EDM).
Land records are kept in hardcopy format in filing cabinets. This is the situation within 
municipalities, the DSG and at the deeds office. The volume of records has increased since the first 
records in 1897. With the end of the economic crisis in 2010 and efforts to resuscitate Zimbabwe’s 
economy since then, cadastral record production has accelerated. Municipalities use a card file 
indexing system to manage storage and access to cadastral information. They keep valuation rolls 
which record commercial and industrial properties and the market value. However, the valuation 
roll is seldom updated and more reliable property valuations are available from real estate agencies.
Topographical maps within the DSG are out of date as the majorities are based on aerial surveys 
performed in 1979 (Kurwakumire and Chaminama, 2012). 
The manual cadastral systems present major problems including (1) slow access to information, 
(2) paper documents depreciate due to wear and tear, (3) inefficient backup of documents, (4) loss 
of documents and (5) inefficient sharing and exchange of land information. Cadastral data can be 
viewed as a public good as it forms part of public sector information (Bennet et al., 2013; 
Kurwakumire, 2013a). In that regard, it should be widely available and accessible. The 
conveyancing process is done separately by private conveyancors. It is lengthy (on average 40 days) 
and expensive as they are too many processes and transaction costs. One of the time consuming 
aspects is on performing physical searches for cadastral records and deeds information at the DSG 
and deeds office respectively since both Departments are operating analogue systems. 
The fast track land redistribution exercise in 2000 reversed some procedures which were regular 
prior to this process regarding land resettlement. This was in conflict with the prior Zimbabwe land 
policy in which there was a legal procedure to be followed from the time a farm is identified for 
reallocation to the time the new settlers occupy the land. The land was not legally transferred to the 
State prior to reallocation, and compensation procedures were not followed. The procedure should 
have been to subdivide the land first through a survey of land and then transfer rights to the 
recipients identifies for resettlement. The legal requirements for land acquisition for resettlement 
were later changed by the amended land acquisition act which became the driver of the fast track 
land redistribution exercise in 2000. Later, the land policy changed such that resettled land holders 
were granted 99 year leases after a cadastral survey of the land (Paradzayi, 2007). However land 
surveys for the 99 year leases only gained momentum from 2010 onwards. This has resulted in a 
backlog of cadastral surveys that are still to be done. This will take considerable time especially 
using only the technology prescribed in the Land Survey Regulations. There is need to harness the 
benefits of technology in both the execution of surveys and the lodgement and examination of 
surveys. A lot of work still needs to be done in converting quantities of analogue data into digital 
format. 

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Kurwakumire (2013b) suggests re-engineering of business processes for land administration 
activities within municipalities. Kurwakumire and Chaminana (2012) recommend the use of new 
technology in boundary demarcation and the need to revise the Zimbabwean datum. Kurwakumire 
(2013a) develops a pilot webGIS application to enhance spatial data availability and sharing within 
and outside municipalities. Modernization of cadastral processes in the context of this paper relates 
to the adoption of ICT in the automation of the cadastre (see figure 1). The basis of the 
modernisation is the transition from a manual and now inefficient cadastral system to an automated 
system which can incorporate new tenure arrangements. This proposed implementation attempts to 
resolve problems such as security, information management, access, storage, compatibility, 
interoperability and sharing of cadastral information. The modernized system should be extended to 
digital lodgement of cadastral data at the Surveyor-General’s Department (DSG) as most land 
survey data is captured in digital form either by total station or global navigation satellite systems 
equipment (Kurwakumire and Chaminama, 2012) and the processing into information (maps, 
diagrams etc) is also conducted digitally. In the efforts of managing spatial data, the DSG should 
identify all providers and data types and compile a metadata catalogue. Metadata should include 
date of collection, accuracy, scale and resolution. This gives users confidence or certainity when 
using data collected by other organisations. In future, it is also necessary to think of reforms in the 
rural areas which are administered through the communal tenure system in order to implement pro-
poor land management practices (Lemmen, 2010; van der Molen, 2005) which can in-turn uplift the 
livelihoods of people on communal land.
Figure 1: Re-engineering Information Access Protocols (Kurwakumire, 2013b, page 7) 

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