By Staff Reporter
HARARE — GOVERNMENT has explained that the recently announced return of 67 farms to white farmers does not reflect a reversal of Zimbabwe’s Land Reform Programme but a move to settle outstanding legal and constitutional obligations.
Following the announcement, government critics had interpreted the move as a reversal of the late 90s to early 2000s programme that redistributed land to previously marginalised black farmers.
The farms are covered under the Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreements (BIPPA), an investment promotion and protection agency that preceded the land redistribution policy.
“The BIPPA process is about settling outstanding legal claims and compensating investments protected by bilateral treaties, it does not open the floodgates for the return of all former white farms, the land reform programme remains irreversible,” said Agriculture Minister Anxious Masuka, who is the Acting Leader of Government Business in Parliament.
Masuka confirmed that while 67 properties covered under BIPPA will be returned to their previous owners, this represented a fraction of the total land under the programme and is being done strictly within the framework of Zimbabwean law and international investment obligations.
Government is set to also return 840 farms that were wrongly redistributed as they belonged to black farmers.
The development has been followed by another government directive to give 10,000 title deeds to farmers in Matenganyika who were given leases before independence in 1980.
