Former Zimbabwe white farmers can now apply to regain possession of their farms that were compulsorily taken away from them about two decades ago under the government’s land reform programme, APA learnt here on Tuesday.
In a joint statement issued on Monday night, Lands and Agriculture Minister Anxious Masuka and Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube said interested former farm owners “can apply in writing to the Minister of Lands, Agriculture, Water and Rural Resettlement for restoration of title to the piece of agricultural land that was compulsorily acquired from them for resettlement.”
“The government will grant their applications where the circumstances presently obtaining on the ground permit the restoration of their land to them,” the joint statement said.
It said in order to allow the interested former farm owners to regain possession of the pieces of land, the government would “revoke the offer letters of resettled farmers currently occupying those pieces of land and offer them alternative land elsewhere.”
“Where the situation presently obtaining on the ground makes it impractical to restore land in this category to its former owners, the government will offer the former farm owners alternative land elsewhere as restitution where such land is available,” the ministers said.
The latest move is seen as capitulation by the Harare authorities who have for years insisted that their controversial land grab programme, which was started in 2000 and saw more than 4,500 white farmers losing their land, was irreversible.
It is also seen as an attempt by the Zimbabwean government to circumvent the payment of compensation to the white farmers for improvements that had been made on the properties before they were taken away from them.
The joint statement comes less than a week after President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s signed an agreement with representatives of the farmers to pay US$3.5 billion to the growers for infrastructure on the farms and not the land itself.
The money is to be jointly raised from international donors by the Zimbabwean authorities and the farmers.
JN/APA