Le Zimbabwe verse 146 millions de dollars d’indemnités aux agriculteurs étrangers
Zimbabwe has announced the return of several farms belonging to foreigners, seized during a violent land grab more than 25 years ago, and the payment of $146 million in compensation.
Zimbabwe has announced the return of several farms belonging to foreigners, seized during a violent land grab more than 25 years ago, and the payment of $146 million in compensation.
Agriculture Minister Anxious Masuka told parliamentarians that the transfer involved 67 properties. Treasury data also showed that these payments would settle claims from landowners in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the former Yugoslavia.
According to Bloomberg, Masuka stated that 840 farms owned by black farmers were being returned, along with approximately 400 farms owned by white farmers.
Land ownership structure of the colonial era
Under British colonial rule, much of Zimbabwe's fertile farmland was allocated to white settlers. By the time the country gained independence in 1980, after a long liberation war, approximately 4,000 white commercial farmers owned nearly half of the country's productive farmland.
To address land inequality, the Zimbabwean government pledged to acquire white-owned farms for redistribution, with Great Britain initially agreeing to contribute to the financing of the process. However, progress was slow, and the British government ultimately withdrew its financial support in the late 1990s.
In 2000, then-Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe encouraged the invasion of white-owned farms by subsistence farmers and young black people, claiming it would make up for the injustices of the colonial era.
Several white farmers, along with hundreds of their workers, were killed, and approximately 4,000 people were evicted from their land. These seizures led to international sanctions, and in 2020, the government agreed to pay $3.5 billion in compensation to the white farmers as part of its efforts to reintegrate them into international financial markets.
The company subsequently amended the terms of the agreement to include dollar bonds as part of the repayment, but the revised offer was rejected by a number of farmers.
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