Zimbabwe has paid approximately $521 million in compensation to white farmers for land expropriated in 2000 under the agrarian reform programme of then-President Robert Mugabe, a government spokesperson announced on Tuesday.
“To date, the Government has disbursed $508 million in treasury bills and made cash payments of $12.6 million to former white farmers whose land was acquired during the country’s Land Reform Programme,” said Nick Mangwana, spokesperson for the Zimbabwean government, in a post on his official X account.
A total of 623 farmers have been covered by these compensation payments, according to Deputy Minister of Finance, Economic Development and Investment Promotion Kudakwashe Mnangagwa, in recent remarks to the National Assembly, the lower house of parliament.
The payment of compensation to former farm owners is a significant step in the process of clearing arrears and resolving the country’s substantial debt, which has been in default since 1999, as Zimbabwe works to restore confidence among international creditors.
The government of the late Robert Mugabe — who ruled the country with an iron fist from 1980 until he was removed from power by the military in 2017 — expropriated approximately 4,000 white farmers from their land in 2000, at a time when the country was experiencing a severe economic recession. The farmers had originally acquired those landholdings during the colonial era.
White farmers had played a fundamental role in Zimbabwe’s agricultural economy up to that point, producing tobacco and horticultural products such as flowers for export.
The black population subsequently began informally occupying the fields that had been left vacant following the expropriations.
Source: Diário Económico
Original article: https://www.diarioeconomico.co.mz/?p=548660
