The authorities in Zimbabwe, who are battling to restore lost production on farms, are scheduled this week to visit new black farmers in the west of the country to see if they qualify for 99-year land leases, local reports said on Monday.
Members of the National Land Board are to visit farmers in Matabeland North and South, Lands Minister Didymus Mutasa told the state-controlled The Herald newspaper.
Leases will only be issued ”if the board is satisfied that a farmer is fully utilising the farm he was allocated” under President Robert Mugabe’s controversial programme of white-land seizures, launched six years ago, Mutasa said.
Following sweeping changes to the Constitution last year, which have made all agricultural land state land, farmers can no longer own land in Zimbabwe,
”Once you get the lease, it means that you would use the farm for 99 years. So we should be careful in the exercise because we do not want to give a lease to anyone who would not use the land productively for 99 years,” Mutasa said.
Before 2000, much of Zimbabwe’s prime agricultural land belonged to about 4 000 white commercial farmers; now it is mostly in the hands of new black farmers. But some senior government officials are exasperated at the plummeting production levels and there have been threats to take back farms.
Mugabe is keen to restore Zimbabwe’s image as the grain basket of Southern Africa. Since the start of the land-reform programme, the country has had to import hundreds of thousands of tonnes of the staple maize to make up for poor harvests.
Meanwhile, the government has been issuing mixed signals on the future of white farmers who may want to lease land from the government.
Flora Buka, Minister of State for Special Affairs Responsible for Land Reform, says 500 white farmers who have applied for leases are having their applications considered.
But in an interview with the private Zimbabwe Independent newspaper last Friday, Mutasa said ”no white farmer is being invited back. And why should we offer them such long leases?” — Sapa-dpa