Why We Wrote This<\/p>\n
Twenty-five years after the infamous seizures of its white-owned farms, Zimbabwe is still reckoning with their complicated legacy. <\/p>\n
Now it\u2019s happening. In April, the farmers at the caf\u00e9 received the first installments in a 10-year schedule to repay them for some of their losses.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been long and difficult, but we are happy with the agreement,\u201d says Harry Orphanides, who is in his 70s and part of the team of farmers that negotiated with the government.<\/p>\n
This reckoning is happening as the U.S. government begins accepting white farmers from neighboring South Africa as refugees, claiming without evidence that they are facing similar threats to their land.<\/p>\n
For many Zimbabweans, though, the question of compensating white farmers goes beyond appeasing the international community. It is part of a bigger reckoning about land and justice that stretches back to when the British arrived in the country more than a century ago.<\/p>\n
Fast-track reform<\/p>\n
Under British colonial rule, much of Zimbabwe\u2019s territory was carved up and handed out to white settlers. By the time the country became independent in 1980, after a 15-year guerrilla war, nearly half its farmland<\/a> was owned by some 4,000 white people, who made up about one-twentieth of 1% of the population of 7 million.<\/p>\n \u201cThe land question was always national grievance No. 1, the reason we took up arms to fight the colonialists,\u201d explains Dzingai Mutumbuka, who was part of the independence negotiations and later served as Zimbabwe\u2019s first education minister.<\/p>\n To tip the scales, Zimbabwe\u2019s government pledged to buy up as many white-owned farms as possible for redistribution, and the British agreed to help fund the effort. However, progress was slow, and in the late 1990s, the British government withdrew its support<\/a>.<\/p>\n Impatient with the pace of change, the Zimbabwean government in 2000 asked citizens to vote on a new constitution that would give it the power to seize white-owned land without compensation.<\/p>\n \t\t\t Edson Makina stands in his cornfield in Beatrice, Zimbabwe, April 13, 2025.<\/p>\n Zimbabweans rejected the proposed constitution, but soon after, groups led by veterans of the war for independence began to forcibly occupy white farms. Then-President Robert Mugabe encouraged the seizures, preventing police from arresting the invaders and flouting court orders.<\/p>\n In the following years, more than 5,000 farms were seized, often violently. Marshall Roper still has a scar on his face from where he was slashed by a machete during the invasion of his tobacco farm in 2000. Initially, he says, he tried to stay on his land and fight, but after two years, he gave up and moved to Australia. \u201cIt was too much pressure, and the police refused to intervene,\u201d he told The Christian Science Monitor by phone from his home in Queensland.<\/p>\n The aftershocks of expropriation<\/p>\n In the aftermath of this \u201cfast-track\u201d land reform, many white farmers did what Mr. Roper did \u2013 they left. The loss of the commercial farms, a cornerstone of Zimbabwe\u2019s economy, came at a moment when the country was already struggling to balance its books<\/a>.<\/p>\n As Zimbabwe\u2019s debt piled up, it stopped repaying its loans and international financial institutions stopped giving new ones.<\/p>\n After Mr. Mugabe was deposed in 2017, his successor Emmerson Mnangagwa saw the writing on the wall. Zimbabwe needed international assistance. And its debtors made clear that in return, the country had to address the lingering question of the expropriated land, among other issues.<\/p>\n So the government started negotiating. In 2020, it came to a deal with a white farmers union to pay $3.5 billion to around 4,500 farmers. Payments were repeatedly delayed, and a majority of the farmers are now demanding the deal be renegotiated. But in April of this year, the first installments were paid.<\/p>\n![\"\"\/](\"https:https:\/\/images.csmonitor.com\/csm\/2025\/05\/0519%20OZIMPAYBACK%20farmer%20makina.jpg?alias=standard_1200x800\")
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