Citizenship laws to include foreign farm workers

The Zimbabwe government has decided to extend citizenship to all Southern African Development Community (SADC) citizens who were resident in the country at independence in April 1980.

A communiqué released after a meeting of SADC foreign ministers in Harare on Thursday said the government would promulgate the Citizenship Amendment Act for the farm workers "mainly of Malawian, Mozambican and Zambian origin".

Welcoming the move, the Farm Community Trust of Zimbabwe (FCTZ) said the Act would recognise the problems that up to two million farm workers and their families faced.

Godfrey Magaramombe, director of the FCTZ told IRIN on Friday: "It will give them access to social services and, as citizenship is tied into land rights, will enable them to participate in land reform programmes. It will allow them to get birth certificates and national identity documents, and birth certificates for their children, which affects their right to progress beyond primary school."

Access to social services would also be a welcome relief for farm workers affected by the country's land reform programme.

In February the monthly report of the Famine Early Warning Systems Network said the number of commercial farm workers adversely affected or displaced by the fast-track resettlement programme had increased significantly.

Although in some cases the newly installed farmers had absorbed former commercial farm workers, many still faced problems. Foreign workers did not have family links in the rest of the country, or the money to return home. Losing their livelihoods and their homes meant they had to rely on relief food provided by NGOs like the FCTZ.

All farm workers will be included in an assessment of the food security situation on farms.