The government of Zimbabwe has started payment of white commercial farmers who lost land during the controversial land reform programme under former president Robert Mugabe.
State-owned, The Herald newspaper in Zimbabwe reported on Thursday that the payments mark a significant milestone towards resolving the long-standing debacle.
Professor Mthuli Ncube, Zimbabwe’s Finance, Economic Development and Investment Promotion Minister announced that Harare had issued US$307 million in treasury bonds, and also disbursed US$3.1 million (around R58 million) in cash to 378 farmers.
According to The Herald, the cash payment represents one percent of the US$311 million allocated for the first payment batch.
Last year, IOL reported that Ncube announced that the Zimbabwean government would distribute US$20 million (around R350 million) to compensate an initial 94 former farmers who were affected by the land reform programme.
“On the matter of compensation, BIPPA (Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement) farmers, as you know in the budget we set aside $20 million equivalent for that compensation. That is going to begin in earnest in this last quarter of the year,” Ncube told journalists in Harare in October.
“We have been going through a verification process and that process is now producing credible results. We know who they are, who they are not, so we will be able to begin the compensation process.”
Ncube emphasised that the compensation project was a multi-year programme and “not a once off”.
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This week, The Herald reported that Zimbabwe’s land compensation committee has approved a total of 740 land claims.
During the time of the land redistribution programme, around the year 2000, Mugabe was adamant that the programme was aimed at addressing colonial-era land inequities, which left vast tracts of land in the hands of a white minority after independence from British colonial rule in 1980.
Mugabe, who died in 2019, said it was aimed at addressing colonial-era land inequities after the southern African nation gained independence from white minority rule in 1980.