President Robert Mugabe's government said it would honor ownership rights to land bought on the property market, backtracking on previous announcements it would nationalize all farmland, according to a state newspaper report. Citing a letter by Foreign Ministry official Joe Bimha to Zimbabwe embassies abroad, the Sunday Mail reported that the government would be nationalizing only the land it had seized under its land reform program. "The correct position is that all land acquired under the current phase of the land reform program now reposes to the state," Bimha was quoted as saying.
| Which is all the good stuff. |
The report clarifies a June 8 statement by Land Reform Minister John Nkomo that title deeds to all productive land were being abolished and replaced with 99-year state-issued leases. Nkomo's statement raised fears of massive new seizures of farms, industrial holdings, private properties and even homes. "In the end, there shall be no such thing as Zimbabwe private land," Nkomo had said.
| "All ownership will repose with the king..." |
But Bimha said only land seized by the state, including more than 5,000 farms confiscated from former white owners for redistribution to new black farmers, was being nationalized. "With respect to land falling outside this category, the applicable constitutional provisions (of ownership) remain valid," he was quoted as saying. Mugabe argues redistribution is needed to redress British colonial injustices, when much of the best farmland was settled by whites. About 200,000 black families have been allocated land under the government program, most for small-scale farming. Scores of others have bought commercial farms. Critics of the redistribution program say much of the best farmland has been allocated to Mugabe's cronies thug-boys crooks syncophants supporters and is currently underutilized or lying fallow. |