[Image: Newsdesk]
White Zimbabwean farmers are reportedly working the land again a generation after Robert Mugabe’s fast-track reform programme drove thousands from their properties, although the new arrangements do not hand the old title deeds back.
For South Africans, the development lands inside our own argument about land reform, property rights and whether agricultural production can survive political redress. Zimbabwe’s answer, according to Briefly News, is a patchwork of Black ownership and leased commercial expertise.
The publication reports that about 400 white farmers now operate through joint ventures with Black land-grant holders. Another 400 reportedly kept farming after reducing the size of their original holdings during the upheaval.
Under Zimbabwe’s A2 lease system, roughly 8 000 active agreements connect land-grant holders with commercial operators. Some returning farmers are the children of people displaced during the seizures and are now in their 30s and 40s, occasionally working the same soil their parents farmed.
Business Insider Africa, citing Bloomberg, reports that Zimbabwe has paid about $508 million (R8.5 billion) towards a $3.5 billion (about R58.5 billion) deal agreed in 2020 for improvements made to seized farms. The settlement covers about 4 000 former farmers and excludes payment for the land itself.
Deputy Finance Minister Kudakwashe Mnangagwa told Bloomberg that $12.6 million (R211 million) had been paid in cash, with the balance delivered through dollar-denominated bonds accepted by participating farmers.
“The bonds are not foisted on the individual,” Mnangagwa said. “The fact that they have been paid, partially in cash and the remainder in bonds, is acceptance.”
The government has also begun resolving claims linked to foreign-owned farms. Treasury data cited by Business Insider Africa covers 67 properties and about $146 million (R2.4 billion) in compensation involving owners connected to Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the former Yugoslavia.
Seems history has returned with a lease agreement.
Zimbabwe’s original redistribution sought to correct a colonial system under which about 4 000 white commercial farmers controlled nearly half of the country’s productive agricultural land at independence in 1980. The violence, displacement and collapse that followed Mugabe’s 2000 campaign left a wound no joint venture can quietly initial away.
The new farming arrangements would leave ownership with the beneficiaries of land reform while bringing experienced operators back into production. That is a practical compromise carrying 25 years of unfinished politics across the Limpopo.
[Source: Briefly News & Business Insider Africa]