PH
The Zimbabwean government has taken at least 9.4 million hectares of commercial land since its land redistribution programme started in 2000, a report said on Monday.
According to New Zimbabwe, the Lands and Rural Resettlement Deputy Minister Berita Chikwama recently told the senate’s upper house that since the “controversial” land seizures began more than a decade ago, none of the intended black beneficiaries owned that land.
This came after an opposition lawmaker requested an audit of the size of the land now being occupied by A1, A2 farmers and the number of tittle holders of the land previously owned by white farmers.
The deputy minister claimed that there were no tittle deeds that had been issued to the land owners.
President Robert Mugabe’s government embarked on the controversial land seizures of white-owned farms to resettle landless blacks in 2000.
At least 4 000 white commercial farmers were evicted from their farms.
Mugabe said at the time that the reforms were meant to correct colonial land ownership imbalances.
The land seizures were often violent, claiming the lives of several white farmers during clashes with veterans of Zimbabwe’s 1970s liberation struggle.
