Maravi

White farmers have themselves to blame, says Mugabe

White farmers have themselves to blame, says Mugabe
Written by Kingsley Kaswende in Harare, Zimbabwe
Thursday, July 09, 2009 5:00:20 PM

PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe has said white farmers who have not been compensated after their farms were acquired under the country's land reform programme have themselves to blame for siding with Britain, which refused to compensate them.

And Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai said in pursuant to Zimbabwean law, the farmers whose land was acquired will not be compensated by the Zimbabwean government but that the government will only pay for improvements they did on the land.

President Mugabe was speaking on Thursday at the inaugural Zimbabwe Investment Promotion Conference in Harare, whose major aim is to attract investors to the country.

He was responding to concerns by commercial farmers, who wanted to find out when they would be compensated for the loss of business and livelihoods after their farms were repossessed by the Zimbabwean government for redistribution to landless natives.

He said it was Britain's responsibility to pay compensation, and called on the farmers to help the government press for compensation funds from Britain.

"This is our stand. It is the British's responsibility [to pay compensation]. The farmers let themselves down. Instead of helping us press Britain to avail money for compensation, they have tended to side with the British...let them join hands with us to press Britain to pay compensation because Britain has the responsibility to pay," President Mugabe said.

"In fact it is not every farm to have been repossessed, but those farms which we have deemed necessary for us to accomplish the land reform programme."

Cascading the events that led to the land grabs, President Mugabe said the issue of land in Zimbabwe was the most serious grievance that led to liberation wars.

"This issue featured well at the Lancaster House negotiations. We wanted a reform done to land ownership in order for us to bring land in an equitable way from the commercial sector to the majority of the local people. The British government was agreeable to the land resettlement programme but we asked them to fund it but they said would fund it to some extent, which extent was not enough for us to complete the programme in full. The US offered to avail more funds as did the European Economic Commission (EEC) at the time," he said.

President Mugabe said when the Zimbabwean government started the land reform programme in the early 1990s, the British government of the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was paying compensation to farmers but it later stopped.

"We enquired why, because by then we had just resettled 57,000 families but before long, she lost to John Major, who later sent a six-man commission that made a recommendation for the government to continue paying," he said.

"In 1996, the Conservatives were defeated by the Labour party and in came Tony Blair, who said the issue was being studied. No word came until he was two years in office. They then wrote to us and said (the) Labour (party) could not entertain the issue of aid towards land resettlement but only requests of aid that falls within the scope of poverty alleviation. They told us that Britain would no longer have that colonial responsibility."

Noting that the British government was adamant on the issue, the Zimbabwean government grabbed by decree land from around 4,000 farmers, who held more than 80 per cent of all arable land in a country of 11 million people.

This was followed by the isolation of Zimbabwe, withdrawal of aid and the subsequent imposition of sanctions on the country. At the same occasion, Prime Minister Tsvangirai said during his three-week tour of Europe and the US last month, he was inundated with questions regarding land reforms in Zimbabwe.

"In my last trip to Europe over the past few week, the question on land reforms featured prominently. My answer to that question around land was that in principle, there was a national convergence on land reform. We may differ on the method but there was agreement about land reforms," he said.

He said the unity government recognised the fact that it needed to rectify the problems surrounding land reforms.

"We will start with the land audit and we'll deal with compensation, title, and disputes. I think we need to enter a phase in which we will de-politicise and de-racialise the land issue in Zimbabwe. If we have to follow the rule of law, the Constitution is very clear that we pay for compensation with regard to improvements on the land, and when funds are available that will be honoured," Prime Minister Tsvangirai said.

Earlier, deputy prime minister Professor Arthur Mutambara said the current political agreement in Zimbabwe created an opportunity for people to work together and that although the agreement was flawed, it presented the country with a short-term answer to its problems.

"Even when we are fighting now, we know that there's no plan B. The alternatives are too ghastly to contemplate. This is the price we are paying for peace in our country," said Prof Mutambara.

Labels: LANCASTER HOUSE AGREEMENT, LAND REFORM, MUGABE

posted by MrK @ 4:02 PM