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Zim
compensation offer seen as 'daylight robbery'
Mail
& Guardian (SA)
November 17, 2006
http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=290187&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__africa/
The government
on Thursday asked more than 800 white farmers to claim compensation
for properties seized under the state's land redistribution programme,
but the main farmers' support group described the proposed compensation
as "daylight robbery" in Zimbabwe's hyperinflationary economy.
The group Justice
for Agriculture, representing hundreds of displaced white farmers,
said that a four-page notice in state media on Thursday calling
on former landowners to lodge claims for compensation with the Agriculture
Ministry was a sham intended to convince outsiders that the farmers
were being fairly treated.
In five previous
notices, the government had said compensation would not be paid
for land, but only for buildings and improvements made on about
5 000 properties seized from white farmers since 2000 in an often
violent programme that the government says is meant to return lands
taken from blacks during the colonial era.
"It is nothing
short of daylight robbery," said John Worsely-Worswick, head of
the support group.
Since the land
seizure programme began, nearly 15 000 blacks have received parcels
of former white-owned land for commercial agricultural production.
Another 141 000 families received small plots.
But the often
chaotic seizures disrupted Zimbabwe's agriculture-based economy,
plunging the former regional breadbasket into its worst economic
crisis since independence in 1980. At more than 1 000%, official
inflation in Zimbabwe is the highest in the world, and the country
also suffers acute shortages of food, hard currency, gasoline and
essential imports.
In the past
four years, nearly 300 displaced whites have accepted offers worth
five to 10% of the independent valuation of their farms, with some
taking the money because "they were destitute and couldn't pay medical
bills or put food on the table," Worsely-Worswick said.
Those who accepted
compensation offers forfeited ownership and title deeds to their
land.
He said independent
surveyors had valued one farmer's large cattle, corn and tobacco
property at the equivalent of $1-million, but he was offered compensation
of Z$5-million ($20 000)-- or about enough to buy a secondhand car
or four of the latest cellphones available in Zimbabwe.
The Commercial
Farmers Union also said some of its white members had been forced
to accept minimal compensation because of their indebtedness and
"personal circumstances".
"We are advising
farmers to follow up and find out what the situation is so they
simply don't lose their co-issue 99-year leases to black farmers
allocated land seized mostly from white farmers.
President Robert
Mugabe described the first 128 leases as a landmark in his redistribution
programme that would improve farm production by giving new farmers
security of tenure for more than a generation.
The land remains
state-owned, but loans for production can be secured against buildings,
dams and other facilities on it.
A handful of
displaced white farmers are expected to get leases, but not on their
former properties, and white farmers' support groups have expressed
skepticism over the lease programme.
An estimated
400 white farmers are still working on their original farms, but
seizures have continued, with at least 30 receiving eviction notices
from the government in recent weeks. – Sapa-AP
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