The government of Zimbabwe has signed an agreement with the country’s dispossessed white farmers to compensate them with US$3.5 billion after their land was seized when Robert Mugabe was in power.
Robert Mugabe forcefully took over 4,000 farms from the country’s 4,500 white large-scale commercial farmers over 20 years ago. He justified the land seizures as a retaliatory move to right historical wrongs, claiming that they were forcefully taken from Zimbabwe’s blacks.
Zimbabwe’s Minister of Finance and Economic Development, Mthuli Ncube formally signed the compensation agreement with former commercial farmers recently.
While talking at the agreement signing ceremony in Harare, Ncube said: “In the agreement, we have given ourselves 12 months to run around the world, around Zimbabwe to think of ways of raising this funding.
“We are determined that we achieve that. It’s also about pledges not necessarily about cash being put on the table. It’s about commitment.”
Mugabe’s successor, Emmerson Mnangagwa said the deal was ‘historic in many respects’. He said: “It brings closure and a new beginning in the history of the land discourse in Zimbabwe.
“The process which has brought us to this event is equally historic as it is a reaffirmation of the irreversibility of land as well as a symbol of our commitment to constitutionalism, the respect of the rule of law and property rights.”
