In Trying To Right a ‘Wrong,’ Zimbabwe Divides the Country 

When Zimbabwe earlier this year decided to pay reparations to White farmers who were forced off their land 25 years ago – often at gunpoint – many believed the country could turn the page on its past. 

However, most of the farmers offered money said thanks, but no thanks.  

They believe they are getting a bad deal, saying that the majority of the payment, in bonds that mature in 10 years, is too little, too late. 

“The limited number of farmers who have accepted the government’s revised deal have generally done so because they are destitute and require urgent funds for food, accommodation and healthcare,” Deon Theron, 71, who was forced off his farm in 2008 and represents 1,000 other White farmers, told the Associated Press, adding that there are no guarantees the bonds would be honored in a decade. 

White farmers also say the new program is a stunt to curry favor with US President Donald Trump, who began a refugee resettlement program this year for White South African farmers he claims face threats from the government.  

Meanwhile, the push to reconcile the past is dividing the country, with many Zimbabweans furious over the deal. 

“There is no justification whatsoever for compensating the former commercial farmers because for decades, they made huge amounts of money from that land,” Kudzai Mutisi, a Zimbabwean analyst, told Voice of America. “And that land, they acquired these through colonization – they never bought the land – it is something that they acquired through use of brutal force. But here we are: A Black government trying to compensate the abuser. It is irrational, it is bizarre and it should be stopped immediately.” 

Before the turn of this century, the country had about 4,000 White farmers. White Zimbabweans then made up 4 percent of the population and owned half of all the land in the country. 

But long-time dictator Robert Mugabe, facing growing opposition to his rule, particularly from independence war veterans, launched a land reform program to seize these parcels in 2000, ostensibly to redress colonial-era land grabs: Zimbabweans were violently forced off their land after the British arrived in 1890. 

His plan became Africa’s biggest modern-day land revolution, say analysts, while bringing down the wrath of the Western world on the country in the form of economic sanctions, White flight, and the exit of multinationals. The economy collapsed.  

In the ensuing years, the agricultural sector, the backbone of the Zimbabwean economy, collapsed because many of those who took over the farms didn’t have the skills, the finances, the labor or sometimes the interest to manage the farms. 

After Mugabe was ousted in 2017, his successor, President Emmerson Mnangagwa, inherited a broken economy, barely functioning farms, food shortages, and soaring unemployment. In an effort to turn the situation around, he’s pushing the compensation program in the hopes of getting foreign loans, investment, and the restructuring of the country’s huge foreign debt – a condition imposed by Western donors. 

The program, under the law, is to provide money to the farmers only for infrastructure and improvements to the land such as buildings. The land itself, says the government, was illegally seized from its original owners and merits no compensation.  

The government is offering compensation totaling $3.5 billion but the farmers can only receive 1 percent of the total in cash – the rest is in US dollar-denominated treasury bonds that mature in a decade. The payouts are to 3,500 White Zimbabwean farmers, 400 Black farmers, and a few dozen foreign farmers, mainly Europeans. 

However, the farmers want a $10 billion settlement in cash immediately.  

Meanwhile, veterans of the 1970s war of independence say they are angry at how long land reform took following independence from the United Kingdom in 1980: British land appropriations were at the heart of that struggle.  

As a result, some veterans are suing over the program, saying that Zimbabwe can’t afford to pay the White farmers while the rest of the country is struggling. They add that the compensation agreement was kept secret, a violation of the law. 

Others say the original 2000 land reform program didn’t benefit many landless Black Zimbabweans but instead doled out land to those connected to the Mugabe regime and other wealthy elites, to reward loyalty.  

Rejoice Ngwenya, a political analyst based in Harare, says Mugabe’s land reform was not about Black empowerment. 

“It had motives: firstly, to pacify war veterans that were agitating for more recognition – secondly, to punish white commercial farmers who were supporting the opposition,” he told Al Jazeera. “The man was insecure.” 

Analysts added that while the 2000 land reform program did help some Black Zimbabweans, some Black farmers saw their land taken from them, too. 

Still, a small group of farmers has accepted the deal, most of them elderly, ill, and desperate for the cash. 

“I believe this is the only opportunity. We can’t wait 10 years for another deal,” 71-year-old Arthur Baisley told the BBC. “It was difficult for my family in the beginning but life goes on, you have to move on.”