Chinamasa says Gvt will compensate white farmers - no the thugs who seized the farms should pay!

Finance Minister, Patrick Chinamasa, told the IMF that Zimbabwe will compensate the white farmers who lost their farms in the chaotic, violent and totally disastrous farm seizures of the last 15 years.

“We have to confront our problems it is an imperative to build confidence, not just with the international community but among ourselves,” he said.

“I don’t have the money to meet that compensation but what I want to see happen is that there should be a determination of what we owe in terms of compensation and then a commitment from government.”

The seizure of the white owned left Zimbabwe in the crazy position in which the country’s agricultural sector nearly collapse so that the country could not even feed itself let alone continue to be the breadbasket of the region and because it was an agricultural driven economy the national economy went into a tail spin from which it has not yet recovered.

Now the regime has come to its senses and will compensate the white farms and/or allowed back on the farms, if Mugabe is to be trusted to keep his word for he changes the wind.

Even if the compensation was limited to whatever improvements the white farms had made; house, dams, barns, etc.; the total bill is going to go into billions of dollars. The bill will be added to the $10 billion the regime accrued before the credit facilities with international institutions like the IMF were cut for failure to service the existing loans.

This Zanu PF regime is pushing hard for government to take over the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe’s (RBZ) $1.2 billion debt. Most of the money was given as cheap loans to Mugabe and all his cronies who were allocated the seized former white owned farms to buy farming inputs and equipment over the years but never repaid the loans.

The same Zanu PF party loyalists who benefited from $1.2 billion RBZ debt are the one who have benefited from all the improvements the white farmers made on the seized farms. Instead of asking those who so benefited from the improvements to pay the white farmer Minister Chinamasa is asking for the government or the impoverished taxpayer to pay the compensation instead.

So the ordinary Zimbabwean did not just pay dearly for the economic disruption and lost opportunities caused by the white farm invasions, they also paid dearly for unpaid loans the RBZ gave these Zanu PF loyalists who were given the farms just to entice them to farm and now long suffering ordinary Zimbabwean is to inherit the huge debt to compensate the white farmers shoed off the farms.

Whilst those responsible for the violent and unlawful farm invasion, who wasted the farming loans and who benefited from all the improvements and never paid a penny for them are not even expected to apologize from the wrongs much less repay the wasted loans or pay the white farmers themselves for all the assets they inherited.

It is right that the white farmers should finally be compensated; there is some justice in that. Still why should those impoverished by the madness of these white-farm invasions by the one now buying the hooligans the farms, even if to the value of the compensation paid the original white farmer. There is something quite not right; where is the justice in that!