Government to seize 229 more farms

Zimbabwe’s government on Friday published a list of 229 more white-owned farms that it planned to seize and resettle with landless blacks, bringing the total number of farms eyed by the government to 3,270, news reports said.

“We are pushing the reform ahead,” presidential spokesman George Charamba told AFP on Friday. Charamba said 1,884 black families had been resettled on 800,000 hectares from June to 11 August. In the previous two years, he said 4,696 families had been resettled on 1.5 million hectares.

Charamba said that war veterans would soon be removed from farms not slated for resettlement. “The government’s policy is to soon move war veterans who presently occupy farms, if those are not to be acquired,” he said.
Charamba said the government’s position had been communicated to all parties concerned at a meeting with representative of the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU), which represents about 4,500 white farmers, who reportedly own 70 percent of Zimbabwe’s prime farmland.

However, Home Affairs Minister John Nkomo in a meeting with the CFU on Wednesday could not give assurances as to when the removals would begin. The ‘Daily Independent’ reported on Thursday that there had been 48 fresh farm invasions since last Friday.