Twenty years after Zimbabwe started seizing commercial farms owned by white farmers the government has started to give some of the land back.
The partial reversal of Robert Mugabe’s policy covers land that should have been covered by bilateral protection agreements with other nations, including the UK, South Africa and Germany, as well as hundreds of “indigenous” land owners.
About 450 landowners will be entitled to apply for the return of title deeds or compensation, most of them local black farmers and about 150 whose nationalities were covered by bilateral agreements and treaties.
More than 3,500 white farmers, many of them now elderly and still waiting for a settlement, will continue to remain in limbo.
