HARARE, Zimbabwe — Zimbabwe says it has started paying compensation to white farmers who lost land and property more than 20 years ago in controversial and often-violent farm seizures, a move the government hopes will help thaw icy relations with the West.
Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube said the government has approved the disbursement of $3.1 million, the first such payment under a deal signed between President Emmerson Mnangagwa and dispossessed white farmers in 2020.
Ncube said in a statement this week that the amount is equivalent to 1% of the total compensation claim of $311 million. He said 740 farms have been approved for compensation, with 378 benefiting from the first batch of payments.
About 4,000 white farmers lost their homes and swaths of land when the Black-majority country's then-president, Robert Mugabe, launched the often-chaotic redistribution program in 2000.
Mugabe, who died in 2019, justified the evictions on the need to address colonial-era land inequities after the southern African nation gained independence from white minority rule in 1980.
A few thousand farmers owned most of the country's prime farmland before the land reform, which saw about 300,000 Black families resettled on the acquired land, according to government figures.
The compensation for the former white farmers is not for the land, but for infrastructure such as buildings, wells and irrigation equipment.
According to the deal, the farmers would receive 1% of their claim in cash, with the balance being settled through the issuance of treasury bonds. The government issued treasury bonds related to the first batch of farmers last week, said Ncube.
