/ 19 September 2000

MUGABE BACKS DOWN ON ANGLO FARMS

ZIMBABWE President Robert Mugabe has made a rare concession on his plan to confiscate farms for redistribution to landless blacks, telling one of the country’s biggest corporate landowners, Anglo American, that it could keep sugar estate and cattle ranches that had originally been listed for confiscation. A powerful South African-based mining conglomerate, Anglo American owns a large sugar estate in southern Zimbabwe as Hippo Valley and 50 000 ha of cattle ranches in western Matebeleland. Those properties were among the more than 2 300 white-owned farms listed for compulsory acquisition and redistribution as part of Mugabe’s plans to expropriate some five million hectares of land, mainly belonging to some 4 500 commercial farmers.