Govt Willing To Give Farms To White Farmers After Land Audit Is Complete- Deputy Agriculture Minister
The government is inclined to give some farmland to white former commercial farmers when it completes a land audit in March.
The land audit is being done to, among other things, eliminate multiple farm ownership and bring back sanity to the agriculture sector that was decimated by the Fast-track Land Redistribution Programme carried out from the year 2000.
Douglas Karoro, the Deputy Minister of Lands, Agriculture, Rural Resettlement, Water and Climate told Parliament last week that:
The government wants to see a situation whereby there is fairness in land ownership. There is a land audit that is currently underway and we expect the exercise to be finalised by the end of March.
The redistribution is not going to look at the colour of the farmer, whether black or white. It is not going to look at the political inclination of an individual, neither is it going to look at the religious affiliation of the farmer.
A farmer is going to be looked at as a farmer, who has capacity and competence. The essence is that we want to produce enough food for everybody as a country and surplus for export.
In short, the government is looking at ways that are non-discriminatory in terms of allocating land to those people who want land.
