Zimbabwe to Offer White Farmers 99-Year Land Leases

In a hopeful sign for post-Mugabe Zimbabwe, his successor President Emmerson Mnangagwa has decided to stop seizing land from white farmers, offering them 99-year leases on their property instead.

The Associated Press reviewed a copy of the Mnangagwa directive that said it would go into effect immediately. Mnangagwa has also said black farmers could invite white farmers into partnerships, and whites would be allowed to apply for new farm leases.

In Zimbabwe, all farmland is owned by the government and merely leased by the farmers who work it. Beginning around the year 2000, former President Robert Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party began driving white farmers away, claiming it was necessary to correct injustices from the colonial era.

“Land ownership is an emotional issue with political and racial overtones in this southern African country where under colonial Rhodesian rule whites were allocated the best agricultural land and blacks were pushed out to mostly arid land with poor soil,” the Associated Press explains, noting that whites owned most of the best farmland before Mugabe despite making up less than one percent of Zimbabwe’s population.

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