About 200 white commercial farmers have asked Zimbabwean authorities to restore their seized land, a senior member of a farmers’ union said on Friday.
”I submitted close to 200 applications. Some farmers submitted their applications individually,” said Roy Gifford, vice-president of the white-dominated Commercial Farmers’ Union (CFU).
Gifford said some CFU members submitted their applications as long back as 2001, but the applications ”were never taken seriously by the government”.
Zimbabwe’s relations with the West became strained after President Robert Mugabe’s government launched controversial land reforms six years ago, seizing farms from about 4 000 white farmers for redistribution to landless blacks.
Critics blame the land grabs for the country’s downward spiral into poverty and hunger.
At least four million of the country’s population of 13-million will require food assistance until the next harvest in May, according to aid agencies.
Mugabe’s government has attributed food shortages to drought and the country’s economic woes on Western sanctions.
Meanwhile, Security Minister Didymus Mutasa confirmed receiving some applications.
”We have received a number of applications from some displaced commercial farmers,” he said.
”Some farmers have applied and their papers are being considered like any application, but we do not have a number like 200 applications,” he said, dismissing the CFU’s claims. — Sapa-AFP