Zimbabwe launches new land policy to empower Black farmers with direct farm ownership

HARARE (AP) - Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa on Friday launched a new policy that will allow beneficiaries of land taken from white people under contentious land reforms to sell it and to be able to borrow from banks using it as collateral.

This marks a major shift in Zimbabwe’s land policy. Previously, the resettled farmers couldn’t transfer ownership of land.

However, ownership of the land can only be transferred between "Indigenous Zimbabweans," a reference to Black Zimbabweans, and will need government approval under the new policy.

Tens of thousands of Black people took over white-owned farms after then President Robert Mugabe initiated the land reforms in 2000. Mugabe, who died in 2019, justified the reforms as being necessary to redress some of the wrongs of colonialism that put most of Zimbabwe’s fertile land in the hands of a few white people.

But the new Black farmers weren’t allowed to sell or transfer ownership of the land, which was deemed to belong to the state. As a result, banks were reluctant to advance loans to the resettled farmers, who couldn’t use their land as collateral.

On Friday, a handful of farmers, including Mnangagwa, received title deeds to the farms they are occupying.

Mnangagwa also announced a technical committee to spearhead the process for other resettled Black farmers.

Speaking at an event held at his farm near Kwekwe city in central Zimbabwe, Mnangagwa said the policy would help "unlock the value" of the land and make it "bankable and transferable."

About 4,500 white farmers who owned the majority of prime farmland were removed from their farms, often forcibly by violent mobs led by veterans of the country's 1970s independence war more than 20 years ago.

Some farmers and their workers died or were seriously injured in the violence, which included beatings and rape, according to Human Rights Watch.

The land seizures badly impacted commercial farming, forcing a country that was a key regional food producer and exporter to rely on assistance from donors. Zimbabwe's agriculture sector has rebounded in recent years, but droughts are now the main challenge.

Securing finance has been another problem that Mnangagwa hopes could be solved by the new policy of issuing title deeds to Black farmers.

Secure land tenure means "our farmers can access credit facilities" and it "lifts many out of poverty into prosperity," Mnangagwa said.

In October, Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube said that Zimbabwe would compensate local and foreign white farmers who lost land and property in the farm seizures.