Mugabe accepts offer on 531 white-owned farms

Zimbabwe’s government yesterday said it had accepted an offer of 531 white-owned farms for the resettlement of landless black people.

The statement came on the eve of international crisis talks on political violence in Zimbabwe where hundreds of farms have been occupied by so-call war veterans.

Vice President Joseph Msika said the offer of about 2.4 million acres of farmland showed ‘‘some white farmers appear to have turned a new leaf in their attitude’’ toward the government’s land seizure programme.

‘‘This development represents a homegrown solution, which amply shows that Zimbabweans are capable of solving their own problems.’’

Talks are taking place tomorrow in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, between foreign ministers of Britain and its former colonies on the land seizures in Zimbabwe and the country’s strained relations with Britain.

A summit of leaders of the Southern African Development Community, a regional economic bloc, is also scheduled in Harare next week to assess the crisis.

White farmers and private financial backers made the offer in May, hoping to break a year-long deadlock with the Government over its ‘‘fast track’’ land seizure programme, targeting 4,600 farms, and the violent occupation by black ruling party militants of hundreds of farms.

Most of the farms offered had already been targeted for seizure, Msika said.

More than 200 farmers have pledged to withdraw legal challenges to the confiscation of their land, in exchange for permission to remain on subdivisions of their property, Msika said.

The group, calling itself the Zimbabwe Joint Resettlement Initiative, said farmers would assist resettled families, providing with technical advice and equipment to work the ceded properties.

When Zimbabwe gained independence from Britain in 1980, the Government of President Robert Mugabe promised to redistribute farmland to hundreds of thousands of landless blacks.

Land reform has proceeded slowly because of corruption and mismanagement, the opposition claims and about 4,000 white farmers still own one-third of the country’s farmland.

Ruling party militants began occupying 1,700 white-owned farms in March 2000, disrupting production in many districts of corn, the staple food, and tobacco, the biggest hard currency earner.

Mugabe described the often violent occupations as a justified protest against unfair land ownership by whites.

The Government ignored court rulings ordering it to clear the farms of occupiers and broke off talks with farmers last year after the Commercial Farmers Union won a Supreme Court ruling declaring the land seizures illegal.

Earlier this year, Agriculture Minister Joseph Made said the Government was pressing ahead with the seizure of 95% of the land owned by whites and ‘‘token offers’’ of land would not deter that programme.