Harare (Zimbabwe), Apr 10 (AP) Zimbabwe says it has started paying compensation to white farmers who lost land and property more than 20 years ago in controversial and often-violent farm seizures, a move the government hopes will help thaw icy relations with the West.

Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube said the government has approved the disbursement of USD 3.1 million, the first such payment under a deal signed between President Emmerson Mnangagwa and dispossessed white farmers in 2020.

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Ncube said in a statement this week that the amount is equivalent to 1 per cent of the total compensation claim of USD 311 million. He said 740 farms have been approved for compensation, with 378 benefiting from the first batch of payments.

About 4,000 white farmers lost their homes and swaths of land when the Black-majority country's then-president, Robert Mugabe, launched the often-chaotic redistribution program in 2000.

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Mugabe, who died in 2019, justified the evictions on the need to address colonial-era land inequities after the southern African nation gained independence from white minority rule in 1980.

A few thousand farmers owned most of the country's prime farmland before the land reform, which saw about 3,00,000 Black families resettled on the acquired land, according to government figures.

The compensation for the former white farmers is not for the land, but for infrastructure such as buildings, wells and irrigation equipment.

According to the deal, the farmers would receive 1 per cent of their claim in cash, with the balance being settled through the issuance of treasury bonds. The government issued treasury bonds related to the first batch of farmers last week, said Ncube.

The government also paid out an initial USD 20 million in February to foreign farmers from Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland and several countries in Eastern Europe as compensation in connection with the land reform programme, despite bilateral agreements protecting such property from seizure.

The compensation payments are part of conditions of a debt resolution and international re-engagement strategy by Zimbabwe after years of sanctions and isolation by the United States and other Western countries.

The US and the European Union imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe and dozens of its officials, citing human rights abuses that included violent attacks on white farmers and seizures of their land.

Those measures have been gradually eased over the years, although Mnangagwa and some members of his inner circle remain under sanctions.

Mnangagwa has shown signs of rapprochement with the US, supporting some of President Donald Trump's controversial decisions. In February, he backed Trump's moves to deport undocumented migrants.

Last week, he offered support to Trump's harsh tariff regime and said Zimbabwe in response would slash tariffs on US imported goods to zero “in the spirit of constructing a mutually beneficial and positive relationship.” (AP)

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