Zimbabwe’s farming fallout 25 years on: Deal or no deal?

A quarter of a century after their land was seized during a chaotic agrarian reform program which made the headlines of the world newspapers, a small group of white farmers Zimbabweans accepted a controversial government agreement.

Once the backbone of the country’s agricultural sector, many of them are now obviously fragile, fighting against the disease and financially desperate.

“I think that is the only opportunity. We cannot wait 10 years for another agreement,” Arthur Baisley, 71, told the BBC.

Always recovering back surgery, Mr. Baisley was one of those who arrived earlier this year in a conference room in the capital, Harare – some helped by walking sticks and walking frames – to discuss the agreement.

The capture is that these farmers have now received only 1% of their total compensation in cash – the rest is issued as cash obligations labeled in US dollars which mature in 10 years – with 2% interest paid twice a year.

The agrarian reform program, launched by the invasion of farms belonging to whites through the country by the supporters of the late Robert Mugabe, was launched in 2000 by the president of the time, who was desperate to consolidate political support at the time when Zimbabwe had around 2,500 white farmers with 4,000 farms – half of the best farm in the country.

Convulsions have become the greatest revolution in modern land in Africa and were to remedy seizures of the colonial era, when the blacks were forced to leave their land. But that put the country on a path of collision with the Western nations – economic sanctions have followed, companies have come out and the economy collapsed.

This remuneration agreement was pushed by the Mugabe successor, President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who wishes to repair the fences. The money given to farmers, as stipulated by the Constitution, concerns infrastructure and improvements of the land – such as buildings and dams, and not the value of the land itself, that the government of Zimbabwe rightly insists on the inhabitants of origin of the country.

Overall, this is estimated at $ 3.5 billion (2.6 billion pounds sterling). However, the recent cash payment has only totaled $ 3.1 million for 378 farms.

Mr. Baisley said it was not the best deal, but was reasonably right – and his decision to accept it had come with the awareness that controls cannot be canceled.

“It was difficult for my family at the start, but life continues, you have to move on,” he said, adding that he would start to sell some of the bonds to compensate for medical bills and take care of his sick parents.

This is a significant discrepancy, a softening of the hard lines previously drawn by both sides.

Mugabe is used to hitting the fight against holiday rallies saying that white farmers should go to the United Kingdom, the former colonial power, for their compensation – although he was quietly paid for selected farmers.

Meanwhile, white farmers had insisted on a full cash regulation of $ 10 billion. The two parties settled on the figure of $ 3.5 billion.

However, unlike Mr. Baisley, the majority of white farmers hold for an agreement that would see all the money paid in advance.

Deon Theron, who in 2008 was forced to leave the farm he had bought after independence, led more than 1,000 farmers who rejected the offer.

The boxes of his property, packed in a hurry during his departure, always fill the veranda of his house Harare where he told me that the agreement was not fair because there was no guarantee that the obligations would be honored in 10 years.

The 71 -year -old said that he was clear that the government did not have the money – and he wanted to see the international community, including the United Kingdom, helping negotiations when the government refused to move, or even the meeting of the dissident group.

“The British cannot go sit in the pavilion and look at what is going on because they are part of it. They are linked to our history. They cannot move away from it,” he told the BBC.

In an agreement negotiated with the approach of independence, the United Kingdom was to financially support the agrarian reform – but it waded towards the late 1990s when the Labor government came to power and relations wandered.

The need to re-engage Great Britain on compensation was the battle cry of many veterans who led the invasions of the farm. They had fought in the 1970s war against the rule of the white minority – and felt disappointed by the slowness of the agrarian reform after independence.

But like white farmers, war veterans are also divided on the management by the government of compensation.

A faction is pursuing the government for having “illegally” accepted to pay $ 3.5 billion in compensation, saying that the offer should have been agreed in Parliament.

One of its leaders, Godfrey Gurira, said that, given that the countless economic challenges are confronted in Zimbabwe short of money, he should not have prioritized white farmers.

“It’s such a colossal amount … For a nation of our size. People suffer from barely reaching both ends, hospitals have nothing, so we have the luxury of paying $ 3.5 billion. In our opinion, it is a useless act of appeasement,” he told the BBC.

A second trial calls into question an aspect of a new land policy which requires that new farmers pay for the ground in order to obtain title acts to have a land squarely.

In the wake of redistribution, the 250,000 people who replaced the 2,500 white farmers were only entitled to 99 -year -old leases. However, this meant that it was almost impossible for them to obtain bank loans because their security security was not guaranteed.

Last year, the government said that farmers could apply to own their land – with title titles – but that they had to pay between $ 100 and $ 500 per hectare (2.47 acres).

This money will go to the compensation agreement to white farmers, according to the government.

Those who question this say that they are said to force black farmers to effectively buy the land contradicts the law.

And the black farmers themselves are divided on the problem.

The agrarian reform program had mixed results. Many new farmers did not have the skills, finances and the workforce to be successfully cultivated. But the country’s agricultural sector is now rebounding with successful farmers.

In 2002, Salomon Ganye arrived by bicycle to receive 20 hectare bare land in Harare South.

It was part of the large 2,700 hectare farm which had been divided between 77 people.

He found the first years of a struggle – suffering from a lack of finance and climatic shock. But slowly through Chinese money, he entered the tobacco sector, and after having put the business to his sons – the two graduates of agriculture in their twenties – things have improved.

They built an enviable company with 200 permanent workers and extended into dairy and livestock products. They are asking for the acts of their land and have even acquired more in recent years from the government.

Aaron Ganye, his eldest son, told the BBC that without the agrarian reform program, his family could probably not have bought a farm because, in the past, the structure of the property has seen large expanses of land held by a single family.

“I am very happy because to be honest, we have taken agriculture to another level because now we live a good life thanks to agriculture. We do more than the whites did in terms of tobacco quality and the leaf is good,” said the 25 -year -old player proudly.

“We have invested in technology. It’s not easy. I now motivate more farmers to do a good job here,” he said.

He thinks that new farmers should contribute to payments for remuneration, but depending on the value of the infrastructure they have inherited.

Politically, tensions are also tackling – and the British government has no Zimbabwean on its list of sanctions having recently struck four military and government officials which he had accused of human rights violations.

The Office of Foreigners, from the Commonwealth and Development of the United Kingdom, told the BBC that it was because they were no longer in the posts they held at the time they had been added to the list in 2021.

However, this is significant development, marking the end of more than 20 years of sanctions against Zimbabwe.

The country now hopes that the question of farmers’ remuneration can be correctly resolved to obtain Western support for current talks on the restructuring of its massive foreign debt.

There is no doubt that 25 years later, Calm returned to almost all agricultural fronts.

Agriculture bounces this year, farmers have sold more than 300,000 tonnes of auction tobacco – the highest tobacco production of all time.

But a compromise is necessary on all sides so that the country jumps completely over the obstacle of the agrarian reform and its fallout.