Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe has appointed a team of experts to undertake a comprehensive review of the country’s controversial land reform scheme.
According to state media, the team comprises academics, agriculture experts, business people and former state employees, and will, among other things, recommend corrective measures to the reforms.
In March this year, Land Reform Minister Flora Buka admitted the land reform exercise had some ”irregularities”.
The committee has been tasked with assessing progress so far in the reforms which have seen the government seize 11-million hectares of farmland from whites and redistribute it to blacks.
The land reforms have partly been blamed for Zimbabwe’s grave food shortages.
International food agencies have estimated that at the peak of the famine late last year to early this year, nearly two thirds of Zimbabwe’s 11,6-million people faced hunger.
The committee will also examine the impact of the land programme on former white commercial farmers and their farm labourers.
Thousands of former farm workers have been left destitute after they lost their jobs following the seizure of their workplaces, according to non-governmental organisations.
Some white farmers have or are in the process of resettling in neighbouring countries such as Mozambique, Zambia and Botswana.
The government launched its controversial land reform programme three years ago. So far 320 000 black families have been settled on former white-owned land.
The special committee will also gauge the productive capacity of blacks who were resettled on the farms and establish the skills they require to ensure food security in Zimbabwe. – Sapa-AFP