Zimbabwe’s white farmers have been told by the government that they must take the compensation package offered to them for their land or risk getting nothing at all, the agriculture minister was quoted as saying in a newspaper report on Monday.
Many white commercial farmers have not collected the money because they are contesting the sums offered.
Agriculture Minister Joseph Made was quoted in the state-run Herald as saying that Z$8-billion-worth of compensation money would be disbursed to new black farmers if the white farmers did not claim it.
”There is a fund sitting idle and the intended beneficiaries are holed up somewhere in Australia, Canada, Britain or New Zealand,” Made said.
He did not give a deadline for farmers to collect the money.
Under its controversial land reform programme launched in 2000, the Zimbabwe government bought up white-owned farms for redistribution to new black farmers.
The Zimbabwe government said it was paying for work done on the land, and not for the land itself, which it says was stolen by 19th-century white settlers.
But the white farmers’ lobby, Justice for Agriculture, on Monday dismissed the latest move by the government as a ”mere propaganda exercise”.
It said the figures being offered by the government to compensate dispossessed white farmers for work done on their farms represented on average 10% to 25% of their real value.
Justice for Agriculture vice-president John Worswick said that about 700 farmers had been summoned to the agriculture ministry to discuss compensation.
”Most farmers have walked away flabbergasted at how low the offers are,” he said.
”They [the government] have failed to raise the finance for land reform. This is just another way of robbing Peter to pay Paul,” he said.
According to a recent survey by the white-run Commercial Farmers’ Union, an estimated 485 commercial farmers out of about 3 300 operating in 2000 have remained on their land. — Sapa-AFP