The Zimbabwe government has begun evicting thousands of families who have occupied mainly white-owned farms that were not earmarked for acquisition under the country’s land reform programme, the state-run daily The Herald reported on Wednesday.
An estimated 12 000 families were evicted from just one of the country’s 10 provinces, Masvingo, according to the paper.
”The exercise, which started peacefully last Friday, saw members of the land committee in the province move around farms ordering illegal occupants to vacate with immediate effect,” reported The Herald.
The paper said the illegal occupiers had settled on wildlife conservancies, de-listed farms, black-owned properties and those owned by churches and other institutions.
The eviction process is expected to last about a month in Masvingo province alone.
Invasions of farms owned by Zimbabwe’s white minority began more than two years ago when President Robert Mugabe stepped up a controversial land reform programme aimed at correcting imbalances in ownership that date from the colonial era.
The invasions, often mired in violence and carried out by war veterans and landless villagers, usually targeted farmland owned by white commercial farmers who, despite making up just one percent of the population own around 30% of the country’s prime farmland.
Under the controversial land reforms, Zimbabwe has listed for acquisition an estimated 95% of all land owned by some 4 500 white commercial farmers in Zimbabwe, according to the Commercial Farmers’ Union. ? Sapa-AFP