Zimbabwe gov't to compensate white farmers in land reform

The Zimbabwean government has begun compensating former white commercial farmers who lost land under the controversial and at times volatile fast-track land reform program at the turn of the century, a cabinet minister said on Thursday.

Lands and Rural Resettlement Minister Douglas Mombeshora said to date the government had fully paid compensation to 240 former white commercial farmers and partially compensated 17 others.

The government, he said, acquired 6,240 farms which is approximately 14.5 million hectares of land that belonged to former white commercial farmers during the land reform program, out of which 1,519 farms had been evaluated to be eligible for compensation.

The minister was speaking at a one-day workshop to gather input from stakeholders in order to come up with a consensus on the compensation mechanisms.

The compensation pledge is included in the debt clearance strategy the government submitted to its multilateral creditors in Lima, Peru last year.

In the debt strategy, Zimbabwe has pledged to clear its 2.8 billion U.S. dollars in arrears to the multilateral creditors (World Bank, IMF and AfDB) as part of efforts to unlock fresh funding from the creditors who stopped lending to Zimbabwe more than a decade ago due to the arrears.

Zimbabwe undertook a decade-long fast track land reform program from 2000 to redress colonial land imbalances.

During the process that was often punctuated by violent seizures of farms owned by white commercial farmers by indigenous Zimbabweans, government repossessed approximately 14.5 million hectares of land which it redistributed to the landless black majority, benefiting more than 300,000 households.

Minister Mombeshora said the compensation process was being derailed by shortage of funds but thanked development partners including the European Union and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) that had provided 7.8 million U.S. dollars for evaluation of the farms.

The minister said the government would compensate for both land and improvements on farms covered by Bilateral Investment Protection and Promotion Agreements and those that belonged to indigenous Zimbabweans, but did not provide an estimated total amount for the compensation,

Any other farms outside the two categories would be compensated for improvements on land only, he said.

UNDP resident representative Bishow Parajuli said resolving the land reform issue was key in alleviating poverty and advancing development in the country.

"As Zimbabwe gears towards implementing its development agenda to achieve sustainable development goals, land reform could play a vital role in its success," he said in a speech.

He urged the country to be innovative in mobilizing funds for compensation given the constrained domestic resources.

EU ambassador to Zimbabwe Phillippe Van Damme said successful conclusion of the land reform program by compensating farmers would help unlock the huge potential of agricultural land in Zimbabwe given that Zimbabwe's economy was agriculture-based.

"Land is a key resource to development and prosperity of Zimbabwe and its citizens," he said. Enditem