Zim compensates white farmers
29/04/2007 11:42  - (SA)  

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Harare - Zimbabwe has compensated 800 white farmers for property seized during controversial land reforms launched by President Robert Mugabe's government, a state daily reported on Saturday.

"The government has compensated 800 white former commercial farmers who had their properties acquired for resettlement since 2000," the state-run Herald said.

The newspaper reported the Minister of State for Land and Resettlement Flora Buka as saying billions of dollars were paid out to dispossesed farmers in compensation.

The Commercial Farmers' Unions, the majority of whose members were thrown off their farms during the land reforms, could not be reached for comment.

In the past the union has been sceptical about the government's capacity to compensate dispossesed farmers for seized equipment and developments on their properties when it was saddled with a financial crunch.

'Room for negotiation'

The Herald quoted Buka as saying: "There is room for negotiation when we pay compensation and farmers are taking up what we are offering.

"As government we are committed to paying for the infrastructure which was owned by the white farmers."

Zimbabwe launched its controversial and often violent land reforms seven years ago, seizing at least 4 000 properties formerly run by white farmers and pledging to redistribute them to landless blacks.

Mugabe said the measure was aimed at rectifying historical wrongs and imbalances favouring British colonial settlers and other white farmers.

He turned a blind eye when bands of veterans of the country's 1970s liberation war led the farm seizures, often occupying them after violent attacks.

The move led to a slide in agricultural production, once the bedrock of the Zimbabwean economy, which is now labouring under four-digit inflation and previously unheard of food shortages.

At least 500 white farmers still remain in Zimbabwe while many others have emigrated to other countries in Africa.

Last November the government invited more than 1 000 white farmers to collect compensation for property seized during the land reforms.

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