Zimbabwe land reform talks collapse without agreement
Talks between white farmers and the Zimbabwean Government over President Robert Mugabe’s controversial land reform programme have collapsed without agreement.
Officials from the Commercial Farmers Union, which represents 4,000 white farmers, had met with Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa to discuss efforts to implement a deal brokered earlier this month by mediators in Nigeria.
That deal was designed to end the violent seizure of white-owned farms and restore the rule of law in farming districts throughout Zimbabwe.
The CFU has blamed Mr Chinamasa’s attitude for the collapse of the talks.
Zimbabwe’s Government has been criticised across the world for allowing veterans of the war for independence to seize farms belonging to the descendents of British colonialists under a reform programme aimed at redistributing the land to the country’s impoverished black population.
Around 4,000 white farmers currently own the vast majority of the arable land in Zimbabwe, a legacy left over from the days of the British plantations.
The Supreme Court in Harare said last December that President Mugabe’s land reform programme is illegal.
The court said the planned seizure of a further 4,500 farms also violates the constitutional rights of white landowners to receive compensation, be given enough time to leave their farms and be protected from violence.
The court had asked both sides to discuss the deal brokered in Nigeria as a way of resolving their differences.
