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HARARE - Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on Thursday handed out the first batch of 99-year leases to beneficiaries of his controversial land reforms, saying his seizure of mostly white-owned farms for blacks was irreversible.
At a colourful ceremony, Mugabe distributed 125 leases to mainly new black farmers, who included a high court judge, a top state media journalist, and retired army officers, but also to a handful of whites regarded as supporters of the ruling party.
"The issuance of the 99-year leases is a critical milestone in the implementation and finalisation of the land reform programme," he said.
"Today, the government has demonstrated that it will not go back on the land reform programme," he added.
Mugabe said the 99-year leases - offering farmers security of tenure over what remains legally state land - should help them secure bank loans and boost production.
Agricultural officials say about two thirds of Zimbabwe's 4500 or so white commercial farmers have been forced off their properties under a raft of laws barring them from challenging the land reform in court.
Zimbabwe, once a net exporter of grain to southern Africa, has suffered food shortages over the last five years as its farming sector has been hit by a combination of drought and disruptions linked to the land seizures. Mugabe said the widely criticised land reform programme is meant to restore national dignity and Zimbabwe's sovereignty after British colonialism under which blacks had lost most of their fertile lands to whites.
"Our loss of it through colonial conquest went deeper than the loss of a mere means of production. It amounted to the loss of our being," he said.
"Land for us is about life and death," he added, saying that Zimbabwe's liberation war was fought to restore land rights.
The issuing of the leases was an important step in Zimbabwe's battle to control its resources and showed that it was tightening its grip on land, Mugabe said.
Mugabe said his government had launched the controversial "fast-track" resettlement programme after Prime Minister Tony Blair reneged on Britain's agreement at Zimbabwe's independence to fund farm purchases from local whites.
Analysts say only about 600 white farmers have kept their land after the sometimes violent grabs by Mugabe's supporters.
Critics blame the seizures for a sharp drop in agricultural production, part of a wider economic crisis that has sparked shortages of food, fuel and foreign exchange, rocketing unemployment and the world's highest inflation of more than 1000 per cent.
On Thursday, Mugabe - who rarely talks about Zimbabwe's problems without blaming them on Western opponents - indirectly acknowledged the country had suffered a fall in farm production.
"Now that we have the land, we must use it productively," he said, pledging to boost state subsidies to serious farmers.
- REUTERS
