The governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has called for a halt to farm invasions, describing those who try to seize land as ”criminals”, a newspaper reported on Friday.
”The invasions are totally unacceptable and should be stopped forthwith by whoever is doing it,” Governor Gideon Gono told the privately owned weekly Zimbabwe Independent.
”Those invading farms are now criminals,” he said.
Gono’s comments come in the wake of at least two land seizures in the small town of Chipinge in south-eastern Zimbabwe last week.
In one case, Canadian coffee-farm owner Dave Wilding-Davies said he was leaving his farm after his farm manager was assaulted by a gun-toting mob.
Zimbabwe has since 2000 seized about 4 000 farms and redistributed them to landless blacks under its land-reform programme, which it said is aimed at redressing colonial imbalances when white farmers owned most of the country’s arable land.
A controversial constitutional amendment approved by President Robert Mugabe earlier this month allows the state to assume ownership of farms immediately after a property has been listed for expropriation, making it impossible for white farmers to seek legal redress.
Minister of Justice Patrick Chinamasa said last week that about 4 000 farms now belong to the state as a result of the constitutional amendment.
”Thereafter, there will be a mopping-up exercise with those farms which escaped the net being accounted and gazetted for acquisition,” Chinamasa added.
Minister of State Security and Lands Reform Didymus Mutasa has also said that land reform will continue until all farms have been acquired by the state.
”Naturally we are going to acquire all land in Zimbabwe, make no mistake about that. After we have done that, we are going to allocate that land to everybody, irrespective of their race,” Mutasa said.
Fewer than 500 white farmers remain in Zimbabwe, where agriculture once accounted for 40% of the economy. — Sapa-AFP