Perrance Shiri, a military hardliner who was head of the air force before being picked for the critical land and agriculture ministry this month, called for “unquestionable sanity on the farms,” the government-owned Herald newspaper reported.

Land is an emotive issue in the southern African nation after the violent invasion of white-owned farms in 2000 by supporters of former president Robert Mugabe, who defended the seizures as a necessary redress of colonial-era imbalances.

The seizures move sent the agricultural sector — the mainstay of Zimbabwe’s economy, once one of Africa’s most promising — into a tailspin, triggering a broader slump that saw GDP almost halve between 2000 and 2008.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who replaced 93-year-old Mugabe as leader last month, has promised to stabilize the economy, including agriculture, and create jobs.

Reuters reported in September that Mnangagwa was plotting with the military, liberation war veterans and businessmen including current and former white farmers to take over from Mugabe, who resigned after a de facto military coup.

“All those who were illegally settled or who just settled themselves on resettlement land should vacate immediately,” Shiri was quoted as saying on the Herald’s website after meeting provincial ministers in Harare.

“Only those people with documentation of land occupancy and/or those who were allocated land legitimately should remain on the farms and concentrate on production unhindered.”

The Herald is the government’s main mouthpiece and reflects its thinking and intentions.

Peter Steyl, president of the mostly white Commercial Farmers Union told Reuters: “It’s still early days, my attitude is to wait a bit more, but I am encouraged by the message from the government which means that there will be room for former (white) farmers to come back.

“The government has a lot of problems to sort out (and) we have to be a bit patient,” he said.

A white farmer kicked off his property at gunpoint in June was told last week he could return within days, the first signs of the post-Mugabe government making good on promises to respect agricultural property rights.

White farmers have previously complained that politically connected people used state security agents to force them off their farms, sometimes even when they were in the middle of harvesting.

— Reporting for Reuters by MacDonald Dzirutwe.

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The new occupants working the land, many of who had few farming skills when they were resettled, say they can barely make ends meet, let alone pay an extra levy.

Their agricultural output is a fraction of the level seen before 2000, when President Robert Mugabe — saying he sought to correct colonial injustices — introduced land reforms which led to thousands of experienced white farmers being evicted.

They are also being hammered by Zimbabwe’s worst drought in a quarter of a century and toiling under a stagnating economy that has seen banks reluctant to lend and cheaper food imports from the likes of South Africa undermining their businesses.

“Are farmers able to pay? I will say no. Is the land being productive? I will say no again,” said Victor Matemadanda, secretary general of a group representing war veterans who led the land seizure drive in 2000 and are now farmers.

He told Reuters that many farmers could not even meet water and electricity bills and that it was the government’s obligation — not theirs — to pay the compensation.

Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers Union president Abdul Nyathi also said his members would not be able to pay compensation. “Most of the farmers face viability issues, the government will have to look at other ways of raising money,” he added.

Mugabe’s land reforms have led to about 5,000 white farmers being evicted from their land by his supporters and war veterans over the past 16 years, often violently. More than a dozen farmers have been killed.

The land seizures, along with allegations of vote-rigging and rights abuses — all denied by Mugabe — led to Zimbabwe being targeted by sanctions from Western donors. This compounded the economic plight of the country, which saw financing from the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and African Development Bank frozen in 1999 after it defaulted on debts.

The IMF’s head of mission to Zimbabwe, Domenico Fanizza, said this month that improving fiscal discipline and re-engaging the international community should be priorities for Harare. He said this would “reduce the perceived country risk premium and unlock affordable financing for the government and private sector.”

Divided opinion

In an attempt to woo back international donors and lenders, Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa announced a package of major reforms on March 9, including the farm measure and a big reduction in public-sector wages. He said it had the full backing of Mugabe.

The farm plan involves 300,000 families resettled on seized land paying an annual rent — based on the size of their farms — toward a compensation fund for those evicted.

If they are unable to pay, however, it could be a major setback for the government’s plans to shore up an economy that is stagnating after a deep recession in the decade to 2008, which slashed its output by nearly half, drove hundreds of thousands abroad in search of better paying jobs and has left the jobless rate at around 85 per cent.

The finance ministry did not respond to repeated requests for comment about the ability of farmers to pay the levy.

Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor John Mangudya told Reuters that the farmers’ situation should improve once the government grants them 99-year leases on their land, which he said would make it easier for them to secure financing from banks and to pay rent towards the compensation fund.

All agricultural land in Zimbabwe is owned by the government and, at present, farmers have no legal claim on their farms — which they say has made banks reluctant to extend loans to buy seed and crop inputs. But the government says it will imminently grant the leases.

“We are saying that the land should produce, but we also know what the constraints are to increase production,” said Mangudya. “That is why we need to finalize on the 99-year land lease agreements to make them bankable so that farmers have security of tenure. With that there is no reason why farmers should not be able to pay (rent).”

Mugabe’s land reform program is a highly emotive issue, which has divided public opinion. Supporters say it has empowered blacks while opponents see it as a partisan process that left Zimbabwe struggling to feed itself.

“The land revolution was a necessity and if the economy was running very well farmers would be able to pay the rent,” said Matemadanda of the war veterans’ group. “The prevailing economic conditions do not allow.”

The land seizures have led to a steep fall in commercial agriculture output; yields for the staple maize have fallen to an average 0.5 tonnes per hectare from eight tonnes in 2000 when white farmers worked the land.

Mugabe acknowledged the skills of evicted white farmers last week, saying they had helped neighbouring Zambia to produce excess maize, which Zimbabwe was now importing.

Elections

A treasury ministry circular said that compensation would be paid out of rent from black farmers who benefited from the seizures. Chinamasa has not said when farmers would be expected to start paying the rents, or at what level they would be set.

When announcing the measures, he said production on black-owned farms was “scandalously low” and that the economy was under siege from the drought.

The white Zimbabweans who accounted for the majority of those evicted will be compensated only for the improvements they made to the farms, while the foreign owners forced out will be paid full compensation for land and improvements, under the plan.

Chinamasa said Harare broke bilateral investment agreements with other countries when it seized farms owned by foreigners.

Tony Hawkins, professor of business studies at the University of Zimbabwe, said the government was “going through the motions to keep the IMF happy.

“They probably want the international community to see that they are doing something,” he said. “I doubt they will press with this ahead of the elections,” he added, referring to the 2018 general election. Farmers are an important voting bloc for Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF party.

Hundreds of evicted white Zimbabwean farmers are now farming in Zambia, Mozambique, Malawi and Nigeria, while others migrated to Europe, New Zealand and Australia.

Hendrik Olivier, director at the formerly white-dominated Commercial Farmers Union (CFU), said the government had not yet approached evicted farmers to discuss compensation, and also cast doubt on the plan’s viability.

The CFU, which once boasted 4,500 farmers who produced 90 per cent of Zimbabwe’s export crops, including tobacco and horticulture produce until 2000, now only has 300 members.

“It’s a huge step forward, let’s acknowledge that. In the past the government has said that it won’t pay compensation,” Olivier told Reuters.

“But if you are talking about new farmers paying a levy, that’s not gonna work, that’s not gonna pay our compensation.”

— MacDonald Dzirutwe is a Reuters correspondent based in Harare.

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Patrick Chinamasa’s comments are sure to add to an already confused picture over policy in Zimbabwe, where the ruling ZANU-PF party has long tried to lift black ownership in the economy in a bid to rectify the imbalances of the colonial era.

The Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Act, which compels foreign-owned companies, including mines and banks, to sell at least 51 per cent shares to blacks, was signed into law by veteran President Robert Mugabe in 2008.

Chinamasa told parliament that the cabinet had directed the minister of youth and empowerment to amend the law.

“Any investment, which come into the sectors affecting our resources, it is very important that they know that we have 100 per cent control over these resources,” Chinamasa said in response to a question in parliament.

“The underlining philosophy is that we should have more and more local participation in our economy. Over that philosophy there is no retreat,” he said.

Chinamasa did not specify what he meant by “control” but in the past he has used the word interchangeably with ownership.

It was also not clear whether the new policy would affect existing investors such as the world’s top two platinum producers Anglo American Platinum and Impala Platinum.

— MacDonald Dzirutwe is a Reuters correspondent based at Harare, Zimbabwe.

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While production was not affected, the invasions will worry investors already uneasy over President Robert Mugabe’s black empowerment policy that seeks to force foreign-owned companies, including mines, to sell at least a 51 per cent stake to locals.

Zimbabwe made world headlines in 2000 when thousands of settlers occupied white-owned farms with the blessing of Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party, leading to a collapse of commercial agriculture that triggered a decade-long economic slump.

Until this week, no illegal settlements had been reported since 2009.

Lands and Resettlement Minister Douglas Mombeshora told Reuters on that Thursday police were evicting about 600 families that had moved onto sugar estates owned by Tongaat’s Hippo Valley Estates and Triangle Sugar in southern Zimbabwe.

“We do not allow that. This is why police have moved in quickly to put an end to the invasions,” Mombeshora said.

Tongaat is the largest foreign investor in Zimbabwe’s agriculture sector, employing 18,000 workers.

Some villagers around the sugar estates have in the past accused the government of failing to fulfil its promise to parcel out some of the land belonging to Hippo Valley and Triangle and may have taken the matter into their own hands, local media reported.

The illegal occupation of the estates will feed longstanding investor perceptions that Zimbabwe does not respect property rights.

The Commercial Farmers’ Union (CFU), which now has fewer than 400 members, compared with 4,500 when the 2000 land invasions started, said its farmers continued to be harassed and evicted from their land despite government pronouncements that land reforms had ended.

CFU president Charles Taffs said a white farmer and his daughter had died after a violent attack by unknown assailants this week on their property in Guruve, 160 km north of the capital Harare.

A police spokeswoman said she was unaware of the incident.

“After 14 years this surely must come to end,” Taffs said in a statement.

“Dealt with”

Adelaide Chikunguru-Musvovi, a spokeswoman for the two Tongaat estates, said this week’s illegal occupations had not disrupted production and “the matter is being dealt with appropriately by authorities”.

Triangle is wholly owned by Tongaat, which also has a 50.3 per cent stake in Hippo Valley.

The two estates’ sugar mills have a combined milling capacity to crush nearly five million tonnes of cane annually and produce over 640,000 tonnes of raw sugar. Their refining capacity is 140,000 tonnes per annum.

In October 2012, the government gave Hippo Valley and Triangle two weeks to submit a plan detailing how the companies planned to sell 51 percent of their shares to locals under Mugabe’s black empowerment drive, or face forcible seizure.

The government has not followed through on the ultimatum.

Tongaat’s estates in Zimbabwe have contracted about 700 black farmers who supplied 850,000 tonnes of cane in the half year to September 2013. Plans are underway to contract another 600 farmers.

— MacDonald Dzirutwe is a Reuters correspondent based at Harare, Zimbabwe.

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