Zimbabwe launches 99-year leases on confiscated land

The Zimbabwe government today launched a programme to issue 99-year leases to black farmers allocated land seized mostly from white farmers.

It said 125 leases were granted for medium- to large-scale commercial farming and another 150 applications from resettled farmers were being processed.

Since the land seizure program began in 2000, nearly 15,000 blacks received parcels of former white-owned land for commercial agricultural production, replacing more than 4,000 whites.

The official state media said President Robert Mugabe described the first leases as a landmark in his redistribution programme that would improve farm production by giving new farmers security of tenure.

Though all farmland remains the property of the state and cannot itself be used as collateral for loans, the leases encouraged farmers to develop their properties, he said.