The Zimbabwean government has offered an amendment to the 2020 agreement to compensate white farmers for being dispossessed of their farms.
The offer entails the payment to farmers in government bonds that can only be discounted over 14 years. The majority of Zimbabwean members of the Southern Africa Agri Initiative (SAAI) reportedly rejected the offer.
The Zimbabwean government has repeatedly failed on commitments to make interim monthly relief payments as a condition of the Global Compensation Deed – an agreement it entered into with dispossessed commercial white farmers in July 2020.
The agreement provided for compensating the farmers with $3.5billion, for the loss of infrastructure on the farms and not for the land itself.
Dr Theo de Jager, Chairman of the South African Agri Initiative, describes the monthly payments as ‘a few dollars every month’, but the payments are vital for satisfying the farmers’ basic needs.
SAAI currently represents over five hundred white Zimbabwean farmers, according to Farmers Review Africa, and together with the Commercial Farmers’ Union and legal firm Hurter Spies Inc, it met with members of the Zimbabwean embassy in Pretoria on 6 March 2023 to update them on the latest offer from the Zimbabwean government.
During the signing ceremony in 2020, Zimbabwean Minister of Finance Mthuli Ncube vowed to raise the money over 12 months and set out to pay 50% of the amount in a year, and the balance over a period of 5 years. Three years later, not much has been done.
Willie Spies of Hurter Spies, Inc. says 56 summonses were issued in 2019 against the South African Government and the President ex officio, in pursuit of a delictual claim for damages by the Zimbabwean farmers. The matter currently sits with the Constitutional Court.