Zimbabwe’s Finance Minister, Professor Mthuli Ncube, announced that the government would distribute $20 million (around R350 million) to compensate an initial 94 former farmers who were affected by the land reform programme.

“On the matter of compensation, BIPPA (Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement) farmers, as you know in the budget we set aside $20 million equivalent for that compensation. That is going to begin in earnest in this last quarter of the year,” Ncube told journalists in Harare on Thursday.

“We have been going through a verification process and that process is now producing credible results. We know who they are, who they are not, so we will be able to begin the compensation process.”

Ncube emphasised that the compensation project was a multi-year programme and “not a once off”.

Ncube said the windfall would be disbursed before the end of the year. Subsequent payments will be paid annually in the next years to the farmers who lost land under then-president Robert Mugabe’s rule, more than 20 years ago.

During the time of the land redistribution programme, around the year 2000, Mugabe was adamant that the programme was aimed at addressing colonial-era land inequities which left vast tracts of land in the hands of a white minority after independence from British colonial rule in 1980.

Mugabe, who died in 2019, said it was aimed at addressing colonial-era land inequities after the southern African nation gained independence from white minority rule in 1980.

Zimbabwe’s Finance Minister, Prof Mthuli Ncube. File Picture

The money was allocated in Zimbabwe’s 2024 budget as part of a series of ongoing measures by the government led by President Emerson Mnangagwa to revive and restore restore the country's once-thriving farming sector and feed into efforts to resuscitate the economy.

Ncube said the farmers who will be compensated in the multi-pronged programme include many people based in countries like Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland and Yugoslavia and other countries, plus around 400 black Zimbabweans.

In addition to the BIPPA land claims, the government of Zimbabwe has received another 441 claims totalling $351.6 million (around R6.2 billion) under the Global Compensation Deed.

Of that total amount, Ncube said around $3.5 million (around R61 million) will be paid by the end of the year – representing one percent of the total claims under the deed.

“Next year and the following year we will be able to continue with the compensation process until all the liabilities are cleared,” he said.

“The same also applies to those (farmers) under the Global Compensation Deed, also the compensation will begin in this quarter after the verification process.”

Earlier this year, the Zimbabwean government issued advertisements in local media advising farmers covered by BIPPA to approach the country’s ministry of lands, agriculture, fisheries, water and rural development.

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