Posted on 02/10/2006 5:21:23 PM PST by blam
Zimbabwe muddle at offer to white farmers
By David Blair in Johannesburg
(Filed: 11/02/2006)
The fate of Zimbabwe's dispossessed white farmers was uncertain yesterday after the regime publicly contradicted private assurances that some landowners would be allowed back to their properties.
Ministers close to President Robert Mugabe are considering a partial reversal of the land grab. Assurances have been given that some farmers will be allowed to lease back their holdings.
After this was disclosed in The Daily Telegraph, Didymus Mutasa, the security minister also responsible for land reform, denied any U-turn. "We are not going to change our land policy and we are not going to surrender any land that has been given to our people," he told state television.
A constitutional amendment passed last year made every acre of agricultural land the property of the state.
Mr Mutasa pointed out that the last handful of about 250 surviving white farmers need official leases to stay on their properties.
"To my knowledge there are not many, if any, white commercial farmers who have the permission, so most of them who are farming now are doing so illegally," he said.
Senior figures in the regime have told farmers that, as a first stage, the surviving 250 will be given leases allowing them to stay on their holdings. Then a limited number of displaced landowners will be given leases allowing them to return.
The thinking behind this policy is that it will ease pressure from the International Monetary Fund, which has threatened to expel Zimbabwe for failing to pay its dues.
But Joseph Made, the agriculture minister, told the state press that white farmers were "irrelevant". He added: "The country's land policies are very sound and will not be frozen or set aside."
Mr Mugabe's regime has invested too much political capital in the land seizure programme to back down in public.
The president made the dispossession of white farmers the central objective of his regime, winning two elections on the promise to hand out seized land to supporters.
But senior officials have privately tipped off displaced farmers that if they apply to lease back their land, some will be allowed to return.
A number of ex-farmers have duly submitted the paperwork required, but no one has been granted a lease yet.
Mr Mugabe's land grab has displaced almost 4,000 white farmers over the past five years. Agricultural production has crashed, plunging Zimbabwe into an economic crisis.
The contradictions have long been a feature of Mr Mugabe's regime.
Its more pragmatic figures, notably Gideon Gono, the powerful governor of the Reserve Bank, are appalled by the economic collapse and recognise that returning some skilled farmers to their land is unavoidable if recovery is to happen.
Meanwhile Mr Mugabe, who turns 82 in 10 days, appears increasingly detached from day to day government.
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"He eats alone."
I don't know how this expression comes across to peoples who are not tribals, but to a tribal it says a lot as to how he is perceived even by his own people.
oh, come on now........there's lots of stupid white men that beat Jimmy at being stupidier.....for starters, George Looney......
No worries, I'm a Zimbabian Billionaire, I have over $9.61 Billion Zimbabian Dollars in bank. I'll just buy all the land back. It shouldnt cost me more than a few billion which I'll probably lose when the government decides to seize it later on.
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