Mugabe backs down on Anglo land-grab “error”

Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe made a rare concession on Monday on his plan to confiscate farms for redistribution to landless blacks, telling one of the country’s biggest corporate landowners, Anglo American, that it could keep its properties, state television reported. Anglo American owns a large sugar estate in southern Zimbabwe’s Hippo Valley and 50,000 hectares of cattle ranches in western Matebeleland.

“We were concerned to notice that in the latest list of farms gazetted, 70 percent of Hippo Valley was (listed),” said Anglo boss Nick Oppenheimer. “But we were much reassured; the president told us a mistake was made and that agro-industrial estates were not intended to be gazetted for resettlement and that the government is going to rectify this matter, and that was very encouraging,” Oppenheimer told state television.