The Zimbabwe government has announced an initial payment of US $ 3 million (2.3 million pounds sterling) to white farmers whose farms were seized as part of a controversial government program more than two decades.
This is the first payment to be made under the compensation agreement in 2020 signed between the State and the local white farmers in which Zimbabwe undertakes to pay $ 3.5 billion (2.6 billion pounds sterling) for the agricultural land seized.
Thousands of white farmers have been forced from their land, often violently, between 2000 and 2001.
The convulsions were intended to repair the seizures of the lands of the colonial era, but contributed to the economic decline of the country and ruined relations with the West.
The payment announced Wednesday will cover the first 378 farms, out of a total of 740, for which compensation had been approved.
It represents 1% of the total of $ 311 million allocated for the first share of payments.
The rest will be paid through the US denominated treasury bonds, said finance minister Mthuli Ncube.
“One of our commitments when we try to reform the Zimbabwe economy, to eliminate our arrears, is really to compensate for the former farm owners who lost their farms during the agrarian reform program,” he said.
“We have now started to honor this agreement.”
Harry Orphanides, one of the farmers’ representatives, told BBC that more farmers have now indicated an interest in registering for compensation.
However, the majority of former farmers have not signed up for the agreement and still retain their title acts.
The government has only agreed to compensate the former agricultural owners for the “improvements” made on earth and refused to pay the ground itself, arguing that it was unjustly seized by the colonialists.
He had prioritized foreign farms in the context of separate negotiations.
In January, Zimbabwe began to pay compensation for foreign investors whose farms were protected by bilateral investment agreements.
In 1980, Zimbabwe acquired independence, finishing decades of the white minority rule. At that time, most of the country’s most fertile land belonged to some 4,000 white farmers.
The agrarian reform was focused on the redistribution of land belonging to whites to black farmers, following policies of the colonial era when thousands of black farmers were forced from their land and that the most fertile areas of the country were reserved for whites.
In 2000, President Robert Mugabe then supported land invasions by a mixture of government forces and vigilance groups, arousing international conviction.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who replaced Mugabe during a 2017 coup, sought to initiate Western governments to restore ties.
Mnangagwa previously declared that the agrarian reform could not be reversed, but committed to paying compensation as a key to repair links with the West.
The country of southern Africa has been excluded from the global financial system for more than two decades, leaving the economy in difficulty with a huge foreign debt.
Analysts say that land payment marks an important step in the compensation for relations with Western nations and to avoid international judgments against Zimbabwe.
