Linda Masarira, the leader of an opposition political party, LEAD, has asked the rationale behind the government’s move to compensate white former commercial farmers whose land was expropriated during the land reform programme.
Reports indicate that the government has started paying RTGS $ 55 000 dollars to the former farmers.
The move has not gone down well with Masarira who took to microblogging site Twitter to interrogate the move. She wrote:
Zimbabwe’s occupation by the British South Africa Company (BSAC) was the genesis of the country’s land problems as war, violence, laws like land apportionment act, land husbandry act and land tenure act was used to dispossess native Zimbabweans of their land. The land was collectively owned by the community…
headmen were in charge of its utilization. During the period between 1890 and 1920, the BSAC made conquest and land expropriation their priority seeing to it that the settler minority gained abundant land.
After the effective occupation of Zimbabwe, members of the pioneer…
…column were each promised 3000 acres (12 square kilometres) of land and 15 gold claims each.
Throughout the history of Zimbabwe, the land has remained the most important political and economic issue. This can be traced back to the time of the Pioneer Column…
…in the late 1800s and the subsequent legal instruments that were passed and entrenched to ensure the division of the ownership of land between the two major races namely, blacks and whites.
Now, what is the justification for compensation of land which was taken from us Blacks?