Zim targets Mugabe’s multiple farms

ZIMBABWEAN president Emmerson Mnangagwa has pledged that his government will seize land grabbed by former president Robert Mugabe and ruling party colleagues in the violent land reforms of the past two decades.

The threat comes after revelations that some members of his Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) were multiple farm owners and benefited unduly from land grabs.

His predecessor, Mugabe, who sanctioned the seizure of farms, reportedly benefited with 21 farms.

“Preliminary reports from a land commission audit show that most senior officials within Zanu-PF have more than one farm,” Mnangagwa told traditional leaders.

“There are some very influential individuals we cannot name who have more than one farm, and we are going after them,” the president said.

He said most of the land lay idle, while the country experienced years of successive agricultural decline.

Mnangagwa said the land would be seized and redistributed to deserving Zimbabweans. “We are going to repossess those farms and redistribute them. We are going to address the anomaly,” he said.

Mugabe sanctioned a brutal takeover of mostly white-owned commercial farms in 2000, purportedly for resettlement among the majority blacks.

Zimbabwe survives on food inputs and aid to supplement inadequate output. | CAJ News