On Friday, the Southern African Development Community tribunal ruled
that 78 white Zimbabweans should keep their farms as they were
discriminated against when their land was seized under the ambitious
President Robert Mugabe’s land reform programme since 2000 which led to
Zimbabwe’s economic collapse.
State owned newspaper, Herald reported lands minister Didymus Mutasa
saying the government will instead accelerate efforts to seize farms
from the remaining white farmers and give it to black subsistence
farmers.
"They are daydreaming because we are not going to reverse the land reform exercise," the Minister reportedly said.
The court said Zimbabwe had violated its treaty obligations by failing
to compensate three plaintiffs who had lost their farms, and ordered
the government to take all measures to protect the possessions and
ownership of the others.
The ruling dealt a big blow to President Mugabe who never expected such
a ruling from his peers, having been so lenient in resolving the long
dragging political crisis.
Reports said less than 300 white farmers, out of around 4,000
originally, are left in Zimbabwe, the vast majority of them reduced to
farming only small portions of their original landholdings.
White farmers in Zimbabwe were set on chase when the country made an
attempt to implement its land reform policy by redistributing farms to
its black and landless majority.
Since the government began to take majority of white-owned land,
agriculture which was the base of Zimbabwe’s economy, tumbled down. The
country now has hyperinflation of over 230 million percent.
afrol News
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