Zimbabwe on Thursday invited more than 1 000 white farmers to collect compensation for property seized during a controversial land-reform programme launched by President Robert Mugabe’s government.
In a four-page notice published in the state-run Herald newspaper, secretary of lands Ngoni Masoka said dispossessed farmers should contact the ministry urgently.
”The schedule below summarises details of farms whose compensation has been fixed in terms of Section 29 B of the Land Acquisition Act,” Masoka said in a statement.
”The former owners or representatives should contact the Ministry of Lands, Land Reform and Resettlement as a matter of urgency in connection with their compensation.”
Zimbabwe launched its controversial and often violent land reforms seven years ago, seizing at least 4 000 properties formerly run by white farmers and pledging to redistribute them to landless blacks.
Mugabe said the measure was aimed at rectifying historical wrongs and imbalances favouring British colonial settlers and other white farmers.
He turned a blind eye when bands of veterans of the country’s 1970s liberation war led the farm seizures, often occupying them after violent attacks. The move led to a slide in agricultural production, once the bedrock of the Zimbabwean economy, which is now labouring under four-digit inflation and previously unheard of food shortages.
At least 500 white farmers still remain in Zimbabwe while many others have emigrated to other countries such as Zambia, Mozambique and Nigeria. – Sapa-AFP