Only a “small fraction” of white farmers who lost their land in the 2000s in Zimbabwe have been compensated to date, the head of a compensation steering committee said on Thursday after the government announced a first payout.
More than two decades ago more than 4,000 commercial farmers lost their land to black counterparts amid the land reforms of then president Robert Mugabe.
Mugabe led the country to independence from Britain in 1980 and was president for 37 years until shortly before his death in 2019.
“There is a tiny fraction that have accepted a side deal,” said Deon Theron, acting chairman of the committee.
“We’re just trying to correct that misconception that the deal has been done and compensation is taking place and everyone is happy. That’s not the true fact,” he insisted.
The committee has already complained that the government’s compensation programme substantially undervalues the properties’ values.
Land reforms designed to correct inequalities stemming from the era of British colonialism largely benefited acolytes of the then government and farmers who were neither equipped nor trained to run the farms, leading to a collapse in production as well as underpinning a surge in criminality, the effects of which remain today.
Mugabe’s successor, Emmerson Mnangagwa, signed a $3.5 billion deal in 2020 designed to compensate those dispossessed, but Theron says they have seen almost none of the cash to date.
Theron said the farmers had so far received barely one percent of the money on a much reduced valuation amount, with much of the proposed gains designed to come from 10-year government bonds.
“The problem with that really is that the majority of those people might not be alive within 10 years,” he said.
“These guys are pretty desperate. They’ve got health issues — at 80 years old, health becomes an issue. Some farmers are even saying that they’re really struggling to put food on the table.
“We were basically four-and-a-half thousand farmers evicted. I think it’s like 117 or something that have accepted and started getting small payments. I think there’s another 250-odd that are looking at maybe on the second tranche of accepting and hopefully getting a bit of money.”
A government agreement announced this week provides for the immediate payment of $3.1 million to a 378-strong group of former farmers but the remainder of the compensation is likely to be in the form of long-term bonds.