Zimbabwe set to harden seizure laws on farms

Zimbabwe’s government today said it will tighten its land seizure laws, effectively cancelling eviction reprieves given by courts to scores of white farmers.

Most of the reprieves were awarded because eviction orders were not issued in accordance with the government’s own land confiscation laws.

These included a requirement that banks and other finance houses owed mortgage bonds on land be consulted.

But Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa said the government proposed to amend the laws, the state-run Herald newspaper said today.

“No farmer should take any comfort from failure or oversight” by government officials who had issued the eviction orders, he said.

Hundreds of white farmers defied the original deadline of August 8, and many had their orders overturned by courts.

At least 306 farmers were arrested and most were freed on bail but prohibited from returning to their farms before trial. Others fled their farms out of fear of arrest, leaving crops in the fields.

President Robert Mugabe last week vowed to crack down on defiant whites.

“Time is not on their side,” he declared, adding that the government would take action against farmers refusing to comply with evictions.

The government has targeted 95% of white-owned farms for seizure. About 4,000 white farmers are among the nation’s 50,000 whites.

Zimbabwe has been torn apart by more than two years of political and economic turmoil, widely blamed on Mugabe’s increasingly unpopular ruling party.

More than half Zimbabwe’s 12.5 million people face severe food shortages, blamed on drought and the government’s programme to seize white-owned commercial farms.