/ 13 October 1997

Mugabe won’t compensate white farmers

MONDAY, 5.30PM

ZIMBABWEAN President Robert Mugabe said on Monday his government will not pay compensation for land it intends seizing from white commercial farmers.

Mugabe, who did not indicate when the seizures will start, said if the British government wants farmers to be companesated, it should come up with the money. “We are going to take the land and we are not going to pay a cent to any soul,” Mugabe said. “If the British government wants us to compensate its children, it must give us the money or it does the compensation itself,” he added.

Mugabe, who was visiting the Matabeleland South province at the start of his provincial tour to appraise the land redistribution programme, said the British government distributed Zimbabwean land freely to its citizens without any compensation to original owners. He added that his government, which was over the years restrained from taking land without compensation, has finally resolved to do so because it has neither resources nor justification to buy land initially taken away from people by force.

Mugabe said he will discuss the matter further with British Prime Minister Tony Blair at the forthcoming Commonwealth heads of state meeting in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Recounting the origins of the land problem in Zimbabwe, Mugabe said after fulfilling the requirements of the Lancaster House agreement, government waited for 10 years after independence in 1980 before acquiring land. The British then came with a new requirement that land be acquired on a willing-seller, willing-buyer basis. However, he said his Zanu-PF government could not justify doing that and last year Mugabe sent Local Government and National Housing Minister John Nkomo and Lands and Agriculture Minister Kumbirai Kangai to inform the then John Major-led British government that Zimbabwe needs to take land but does not have money to compensate settlers.

“The British replied that they were prepared to assist us financially with resettlement and general rural development on condition that we acquire land on a willing-seller, willing-buyer basis. We refused this because our land was not bought off us in the first place. We are only willing to compensate infrastructural development not the the soil itself,” said Mugabe.