Zimbabwe offers to compensate white farmers

17 Nov, 2006

Zimbabwe on Thursday invited more than 1,000 white farmers to collect compensation for property seized during lands reforms launched by President Robert Mugabe's government. In a four-page notice published in the state-run newspaper The Herald, secretary of lands Ngoni Masoka urged 1,094 dispossessed farmers to contact the ministry urgently.
"The schedule below summarises details of farms whose compensation has been fixed," Masoka said in a statement, asking former owners to "contact the ministry of lands, land reform and resettlement as a matter of urgency."
Zimbabwe launched its often violent land reforms seven years ago, seizing at least 4,000 properties formerly run by white farmers and pledging to redistribute them to landless blacks.
Mugabe said the measure was aimed at correcting historical wrongs and imbalances favouring British colonial settlers and other white farmers. He turned a blind eye when bands of veterans of the country's 1970s liberation war led the farm seizures, often occupying them after violent attacks.

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