Zimbabwe rules out returning land to white farmers

Zimbabwe will not invite back white farmers whose land was seized by President Robert Mugabe's government despite calls by the central bank chief to allow them to help the struggling agriculture sector, state media reported.
"The land here is for the black people and we are not going to give it back to anybody. We are not inviting any white farmers back," Security Minister Didymus Mutasa, also in charge of Lands, Land Reform and Resettlement, told the state-owned Sunday Mail.
Since 2000 Mugabe's government has seized thousands of white-owned farms after often violent invasions by government-backed veterans of the country's 1970s struggle against white rule.
But Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Governor Gideon Gono recently urged Mugabe's government to allow some white farmers back on to the seized farms to help revive an economy near collapse.
Gono has said while some new black farmers were doing well, he was disappointed with the performance of others, adding that the government should allow some of the skilled former white commercial farmers to resume operations in strategic areas such as horticulture.
A recent World Bank study on Zimbabwe's agriculture sector said the government's land reforms had redistributed 80 percent of farmland and improved racial distribution of agricultural property, but had increased poverty.
Once the mainstay of the economy, agriculture now contributes 40 percent to national exports, makes up 18 percent of gross domestic product, and employs 30 percent of the formal labour force and 70 percent of the population, it said.
Official statistics show that the sector saw output falling by 3.3 percent in 2004, worsening food shortages which the WFP says could threaten up to a third of the country's 12 million people.
Mutasa said a newly-created National Land Board would scrutinise some land beneficiaries to make sure they had enough agricultural machinery and capacity to farm.
Zimbabwe's mainly white Commercial Farmers' Union says that nearly 4,000 white farmers have been dispossessed, leaving between 600 and 800 still on their land.
Mugabe's government says the land seizures are necessary to redress ownership imbalances created by Britain's 1890s colonisation of the southern African state, but critics say the seizures have resulted in food shortages because the new owners lack farming experience.