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White farmers 'disappointed'
07/11/2007 08:24 - (SA)
Harare - Zimbabwe's white farmers expressed dismay on Tuesday at a supreme court judgement allowing the government to seize agricultural equipment from properties that have been expropriated.
Trevor Gifford, deputy chief executive of the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU), said: "What the court has tried to do really is to legalise the wholesale theft of equipment from white commercial farmers.
"We envisage an upsurge in people taking the law into their hands, taking equipment. I am sure our members will turn to the courts in order to find a clear way forward."
Zimbabwe's highest court of appeal on Monday upheld a law allowing the government to keep hold of all equipment and machinery belonging to white former commercial farmers whose farms had been seized.
Fair compensation
The judgement followed an appeal by a group of farmers challenging the constitutionality of the Acquisition of Farm Equipment or Material Act, which allowed the government to "compulsorily acquire" any farming equipment and material left behind by white farmers.
The farmers also argued that the law did not provide for fair compensation for seized property.
Although the government had made offers to farmers to compensate them for equipment seized during the expropriations, the CFU said the cash on the table represented only a fraction of the true value.
Gifford said: "The majority of compensation in the majority of the cases has not even taken place.
"Not even the evaluation has taken place. Some payments have been made but the payment has been pathetic. It's been a joke really."
Before the law came into effect in 2004, the government had accused white farmers who lost their land of trying to export, lock up or destroy their equipment.
400 white farmers remain in Zim
Under the regulations, it was an offence for a farmer to damage or get rid of any equipment without the authorisation from the lands minister.
Nearly eight years ago, the government embarked on a controversial reform programme to acquire millions of hectares of land from whites and redistribute it to blacks.
A small group of about 4 500 white farmers owned a third of the country's land including 70% of prime farmland before the government launched the programme.
According to farming officials, about 400 white farmers now remained in Zimbabwe with a number of them facing trial for defying government eviction orders.
Gifford said: "We are committed to farming in Zimbabwe, producing food and foreign currency for the nation.
"We just want to be given the same opportunities as everyone else, but it seems we have different classes of farmers in Zimbabwe. It seems we have a new generation of apartheid."
A former regional breadbasket Zimbabwe had become a basket case with at least four million people in need of food aid until the next harvest.
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