NEWLY-APPOINTED Lands and Agriculture minister, Anxious Masuka, said yesterday that the government’s decision to compensate and restore land titles to white former commercial farmers was not a reversal of the country’s land reform programme.

This comes after the government recently signed a US$3,5 billion Global Compensation Agreement with the white former commercial farmers, while also announcing that all farmers who lost their land protected by Bilateral

Investment Protection and Promotion Agreements (BIPPAs) would either be compensated or have their titles restored.

It also comes as Zimbabwe is still reeling from its chaotic agrarian reforms which were carried out two decades ago, after the late former president Robert Mugabe lost a constitutional referendum and ordered the seizure of white-owned farms as punishment for them supporting the opposition.

Addressing a press conference in Harare yesterday, Masuka dismissed the public uproar over the move to compensate the white farmers.

“I don’t know where the confusion is arising because the Constitution of Zimbabwe is very clear in Section 295, Subsection (1) and Subsection (2) that we have an obligation to compensate for land and improvements for indigenous Zimbabweans who constitute only 1,3 percent of the 18 600 farmers that were allocated.

“We have also an obligation under the Constitution to consider the Bilateral Investment Protection and Promotion Agreements and Bilateral Investment Treaties, and those constitute just under one percent of the 18 600 beneficiaries.

“This is not reversing the land reform programme. The land was the prime cause of the first and second Chimurenga and for the fast track land reform programme that we undertook,” Masuka said.

The land seizures of 20 years ago, which were characterised by violence, disrupted production on the farms — leading to many years of hunger. It also led to Zimbabwe becoming a pariah state.

Meanwhile, the ruling Zanu PF admitted yesterday that the country’s land reform programme had been chaotic, although it did not regret what happened.

“When the land was dispossessed from our ancestors, the methods used were brutal and vicious, and people were killed.

“We have the heads of some of our first Chimurenga fighters in museums in the UK right now. It’s not an issue that you should triffle with.

“It’s a very emotive and sensitive issue,” acting Zanu PF spokesperson, Patrick Chinamasa, said at a media briefing.