Many commercial white farmers are still awaiting compensationHARARE, 25 Oct 2006 (IRIN) - More than six years after Zimbabwe launched its fast-track land reform programme, only around 200 of the several thousand commercial white farmers affected have received compensation, and the government will only be able to reimburse the rest by 2010.
According to constitutional amendments in 2000, enabling the government to expropriate land, the authorities only have to compensate farmers for improvements made to their properties "within a reasonable period". In terms of the amended constitution, Britain, Zimbabwe's former colonial power, should pay for the expropriated farmland.
The lands ministry recently told parliament that it had run out of money. "Since we advertised for former white farmers to come and get compensation from the ministry, the response has been overwhelming. That is why the Z$800 million [about US$3 million] that had been originally budgeted for 2006 was easily wiped out, and we had to go for a supplementary budget," said Ngoni Masoka, permanent secretary of the ministry.
More than 4,000 white farmers lost their land when the government embarked on the acquisition of white-owned farms to resettle thousands of land-hungry black Zimbabweans in 2000.
Masoka added that numerous former cattle ranchers had not been compensated because improvements on their farms were "insignificant", and it would take more than four years to complete financial restitution to the farmers. Only 37 farmers were compensated this year.
Dydimus Mutasa, the minister of lands and national security, told parliament earlier this month that only 206 farmers had been paid compensation for immovable property on their former farms.
Justice for Agriculture (JAG), a pressure group formed at the height of the land occupations to protect the interests of commercial white farmers, estimated it would cost about US$28 billion to adequately compensate dispossessed landowners, excluding subsequent damage, for which the farmers should also claim payment.
"Qualified evaluators put the bill ... between US$8 [million] to $10 million for the damages suffered by the farmers over the past six years," John Worswic, chief executive of the JAG Trust, told the privately owned Financial Gazette recently.
Renson Gasela, former secretary for agriculture in the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, is convinced that the government lacks the capacity to pay the white farmers, some of whom have relocated to other countries.
"If they [government] could pay only about 200 farmers in more than six years, I don't see any reason why they should believe that they can complete the process of compensating the remaining thousands in only four years," Gasela told IRIN.
The government failed to pay when the economy was performing better than now and, given the rate at which it is deteriorating, where are they going to get so much money from?" Gasela accused the government of reneging on its promise to pay the commercial farmers 25 percent of the value of improvements on the farms at the time the owners were removed from their land.
"Because the acquisition of the farms was done in a hurried manner, and without any planning, there was no valuation of the farms before the commercial farmers were booted out." He pointed out that the lands ministry should have at least done inventories of the properties.
Many dispossessed farmers have not claimed compensation because they have migrated to other countries, notably Mozambique, Zambia and Nigeria, where they have continued farming, but Gasela urged the government to trace them and ensure that they received payment "because they [the government] have a legal obligation to pay".
The few farmers who have received compensation are unhappy with the amount. Peter Terblanche, 69, a former tobacco farmer living in an old people's home on the outskirts of the capital, Harare, said he was forced to accept the about US$120,000 the government offered him because he was desperate for money.
"I don't know how they arrived at that figure but they just wrote to me to inform me, saying that was the amount that reflected the value of my property. I am now too old to be hopping from one office to another and had no choice but to accept that money," Terblanche told IRIN.
The amount is less than 10 percent of what he should have received, he said, and should be equivalent to the value of the tobacco crop taken over by those who subsequently settled on what had been his property. When the figure was determined, it did not take into consideration rising inflation - now around 1,000 percent - which was the highest in the world.
Since the 2000 land invasions began, Zimbabwe's economy has gone into freefall. An annual inflation rate hovering at around 1,000 percent has seen unemployment levels rise above 70 percent, and shortages of foreign currency have caused food, fuel and electricity to become scarce commodities.
Even though Terblanche, a widower, does not hope to get the remainder, he intends to engage a lawyer, "who should keep my complaint, just in case a new government that is more sensitive to our plight comes into power in the future".
A precedent could soon be set for farmers wanting to take matters into their own hands.
On July, 11 farmers of Dutch origin, whose land was confiscated during the redistribution drive, approached the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes, a World Bank arbitration forum, seeking compensation amounting to US$15 million.
The farmers' case, partly funded by the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa, a nonprofit organisation, is yet to be heard, but the arbitration process is likely to be completed by January 2007.
Reproduced with the kind permission of IRIN
Copyright IRIN 2006
Photo: Copyright IRIN
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