April 7, 2000
HARARE, Zimbabwe (PANA) - The Zimbabwean parliament has passed a controversial land reform bill empowering the government to seize white-owned farms to resettle land-less blacks without paying adequate compensation.
The law compels Britain, Zimbabwe's former colonial master, to honour a pledge it made at independence in 1980 to fund the transfer of white-owned farms to peasant black farmers.
"The former colonial power has an obligation to pay compensation for agricultural land compulsorily acquired for resettlement through a fund established for the purpose," the bill, enacted Thursday, states.
"If the former colonial power fails to pay compensation through such a fund, the government of Zimbabwe has no obligation to pay compensation for agricultural land compulsorily acquired for resettlement," it adds.
Britain, which has been locked in a diplomatic war of words with Zimbabwe over the land reform issue in recent weeks, immediately denied responsibility to finance the controversial programme.
Thousands of government supporters, led by veterans of Zimbabwe's independence war, have forcibly occupied hundreds of white farms since March to press demands for equitable land redistribution.
White farmers control most of the country's best farmland while their peasant black counterparts remain overcrowded in areas with infertile soils.
President Robert Mugabe has made land reform his main campaign issue in parliamentary elections scheduled for May, and has resolutely defied international pressure for restraint on the matter.