OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Tuesday, 8.00PM.
THE Zimbabwe government is about to declare it no longer has any interest in white-owned farms, Zimbabwe’s Agriculture Minister, Kumbirai Kangai, said on Tuesday.
In his annual policy statement for the coming agricultural year, Kangai said he expected 1500 properties listed in November last year for confiscation to be “delisted” in the next Government Gazette.
Kangai, whose ministry is responsible for carrying out President Robert Mugabe’s threat to confiscate 5-million hectares of white-owned land to resettle black farmers, urged all farmers to continue with their the season’s planting. He also urged banks to continue lending to farmers.
The country’s white commercial farmers have been in turmoil since November last year when the government published the list of farms designated for seizure. At the time Mugabe said the land owners would not be paid out because the land had been “stolen” by whites when the first settlers arrived in Zimbabwe over a century ago.
Banks reportedly refused to lend to those farmers whose farms were on the list, saying they no longer provided security for loans.
The Commercial Farmers’ Union, which represents the country’s 4200 large-scale farmers, about three-quarters of whom are whites, has not yet commented on the announcement.
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