Analysts have described a government policy pronouncement which provides for long term leases to black farmers and short term ones for their white counterparts as discriminatory and bad for the economy. Under the arrangement, the remaining 400 farmers will be issued with five year leases while their counterparts receive 99 year bankable leases.
Lands minister Douglas Mombeshora also told chiefs on Saturday that all partnerships with whites, should black farmers consider them, must be approved by his ministry. However, president Robert Mugabe emphasized that Zimbabweans with farms who are unable to utilise the land should surrender it back to state than enter into partnerships or lease it to white farmers.
The policy is discriminatory and borders on illegality as those farmers have Zimbabwean citizenship. “The whites are Zimbabwean too and a government policy must be inclusive and not discriminatory. “The policy confirms Mugabe’s anti-white position and reverses all rhetoric about reconciliation, He added that the development negates the existence of Vice President Phelekezela Mphoko’s Ministry of National Healing and Reconciliation.
“It also makes Mphoko’s ministry a political jester. This policy is not anti-West but anti-white Zimbabweans hence a dividing than uniting one.” On the implication of the policy on the economy Where a government promulgates discriminatory policies, development partners such as World Bank, and other donors won’t provide financial support to such programmes that go against principles of inclusiveness and non-discrimination they hold dear.