Reparations: Zimbabwe Signs A $3.5 Billion Compensation Deal With White Farmers

[loyola llothta]

Zimbabwe Signs $3.5 Billion Compensation Deal With White Farmers
By
Godfrey Marawanyika
and
Ray Ndlovu

Updated on July 29, 2020, 11:08 AM EDT

• Accord marks turning point in dispute over farm invasions
• President says ‘historic’ deal shows respect for rule of law

Zimbabwe’s government signed a $3.5 billion deal to compensate White commercial farmers who were evicted from their land two decades ago.

The agreement is a turning point in a dispute that tipped the southern African nation’s economy into freefall by slashing food production and export income and prompted sanctions from the U.S. and the European Union.

“Today marks a huge milestone,” Andrew Pascoe, president of the Commercial Farmers Union that represents the White farmers, said Wednesday at a signing ceremony in the capital, Harare. “As Zimbabweans, we have chosen to resolve this long-outstanding issue.”

The government plans to sell a 30-year bond on international markets to pay for the compensation, according to the agreement it signed with the farmers. Those whose land was expropriated will receive half their money in a year and the balance in four equal installments annually.

Food Shortages

Zimbabwe has endured intermittent food shortages since the government began the often-violent program that seized most White-owned, large-scale farms from 2000. The country’s rulers maintain that the land was taken forcibly during colonial times and needed to be returned to Black residents.

“Success is highly unlikely,” Jee-A van der Linde, an analyst at Paarl, South Africa-based NKC African Economics, said on the bond plan. “There is so much debt going around in Africa at the moment, Zimbabwean long-term bonds will hardly attract much interest, if any.”

Zimbabwe owes about $8 billion to creditors, including the World Bank and the African Development Bank.

The compensation agreement is for improvements and assets on the more than 4,000 farms that were seized and doesn’t pertain to the land itself, Ben Gilpin, a director of the CFU, said earlier this month.

“This momentous event is historic,” President Emmerson Mnangagwa said at the ceremony. “It brings closure and a new beginning.”

The signing of the compensation accord came a few hours after the death of Agriculture Minister Perence Shiri at the age of 65. The government didn’t specify a cause of death.

Shiri was widely criticized by human-rights organizations for his part in masterminding Zimbabwe’s Gukurahundi massacres, which took place between 1982 and 1985 and left as many as 20,000 people dead. At the time, Shiri commanded the North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade, which was accused of mass executions and torture.

Early last year:

 

[UpAndComing]

So.... reparations?

 

[loyola llothta]

So.... reparations?

Yes sir to white farmers

 

[Dafunkdoc_Unlimited]

​

 

[King]

 

[keond]

This is mind blowing. Say what u want about Mugabe but if he was alive and in charge this would have never happened.

The big talking point WS were using is b-b-but what about the FARMERS IN SOUTH AFRICA AND ZIMBABWE!!!! fukk them savages

 

[LennoxWine]

What do Africans love white people so much?

And why is that cac in the middle built like a Samoan up top and Deontay Wilder down low?

 

[ucanthandlethetruth]

 

[sportscribe]

They are getting compensated for land that was never rightfully theirs in the first place?

It looks like this new President is beholden to powers in Europe. These are the type of deals that have put Africa in the predicament that it's in today.

 

[The Fade]

checkmated, again

puppet ruling mfers

 

[mr.africa]

pathetic

 

[Barlow]

yes indeed family

but i digress

 

[loyola llothta]

They are getting compensated for land that was never rightfully theirs in the first place?

It looks like this new President is beholden to powers in Europe. These are the type of deals that have put Africa in the predicament that it's in today.

That man been kissing the west boots since he got in power after the coup

 

[UncleTomFord15]

Be 90 something percent of your country's population but still get punked brehs. nikkas stay getting embarrassed by everybody and wonder why no one takes black people seriously.

 

[LurkMoar]

That’s what happens when you have no plan, now you have to beg white men to come back and farm so you can eat.