The Compensation Steering Committee (CSC) for former White Farmers has released a press statement criticising the President Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa led government’s claims about progress in compensating commercial farmers who were dispossessed during the land reform programme of the early 2000s.

MEDIA STATEMENT – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Compensation Steering Committee, Zimbabwe

15 April 2025

Zimbabwe Government’s farm compensation claims are misleading:
thousands of evicted farmers still await fair compensation.

Harare – The Compensation Steering Committee (CSC), the legally mandated body representing the majority of Zimbabwe’s dispossessed commercial farmers, today labelled recent government claims about compensation payments as misleading.

In a media statement last week the Minister of Finance made a number of inaccurate claims regarding the settlement of compensation obligations.

The same statement also quoted several individuals who do not represent the CSC or the majority of displaced farmers.

In reality only a small token payment has been made and thousands of farmers – the significant majority by number – remain uncompensated.

The limited number of farmers who have accepted the Government’s revised deal have generally done so because they are destitute and require urgent funds for food, accommodation and healthcare.

More than 4,500 commercial farmers lost their homes and livelihoods during state-sanctioned land seizures in the early 2000’s.

In July 2020 the government signed an agreement with the farmers called the Global Compensation Deed (GCD) to pay for improvements made on the land at a materially discounted value of US$3.5 billion.

This discount compared to estimates by the Commercial Farmers’ Union (CFU) of US$10 billion and independent professional valuations of US$8.5 billion in 2020 values.

The $3.5 billion negotiated discount in the 2020 GCD agreement was premised on a front-ended 5 year payment schedule in USD cash of which half would be paid in Year 1 and the remainder in 4 annual instalments.

The overwhelming majority of farmers supported this deal in a survey at the time.

To date, almost 5 years on, nothing has been paid per this agreement.

Instead, in 2023 the Government offered an alternative payment schedule in Government Treasury Bills over ten years heavily weighted towards years 5-10. A token 2 percent interest rate was added which compares to regional USD interest rates of 10-20%.

This revised offer was put to the farmers in April 2023 via a formal survey in which it was rejected by the majority of farmers.

Whereas 3100 voted in favour of the 2020 proposal, only 782 voted for the adjusted offer in 2023.

This was clearly communicated to the Government in official correspondence.

Despite this rejection, the Government pushed ahead with the revised offer that became known as the Farmers Compensation Agreement (FCA) in which 378 farms have now (nearly two years later) received initial payments of 1% of their share of the discounted offer.

“The bottom line is that government’s recent payments represent a tiny fraction of the GCD’s $3.5 billion – which is already a substantial discount on the actual value of the properties, and these payments have reached fewer than 10% of farmers,” stated Deon Theron, Acting Chairman of the CSC and a former President of the CFU.

“The FCA was originally presented as interim relief payments for distressed farmers, but is now being repositioned and repackaged as a comprehensive compensation solution. This is simply not the case.”

The CSC members are appointed by the Commercial Farmers’ Union (CFU), the Southern African Commercial Farmers’ Alliance (SACFA) and the Southern African Agri Initiative (SAAI).

These bodies collectively represent the majority of displaced farmers.
The two individuals quoted as farmers representatives in the recent government press releases and international media are no longer representatives of the CSC or the CFU.

Both Andrew Pascoe and Harry Orphanides were voted out of their previous roles more than a year ago in 2024 after ignoring democratic principles and continuing to pursue a deal that was rejected by the majority of the farmers they were supposed to represent.

Allegedly they also ignored professional legal advice and have both failed to declare material conflicts of interest.

The latest proposal to issue long-term unsecured government bonds as a compensation mechanism has also been rejected by the CSC.

“These bonds do not clear the debt. They merely convert displaced farmers (Title Deed Holders) into bondholders reliant on very uncertain, very high-risk, very long-term payouts,” explained Angus Selby also representing the CSC.

“Furthermore, we have a series of legal opinions questioning the limited recourse in the event of non-performance.

It seems that the elderly, desperate and destitute are being used strategically as a Trojan horse to pretend that compensation has been resolved when the actual numbers and values tell a totally different story.”

The CSC also emphasised that the FCA does not represent a substantive solution, nor does it meet the Government’s constitutional obligations to settle compensation at fair value within a reasonable timeframe.

While the CSC acknowledges the government’s stated intent to pay, it insists that a more comprehensive and viable solution must be explored to meet the expectations of all key stakeholders.

It also cautioned the international community that accepting or promoting the FCA as a quick convenient fix to meet other objectives such as debt restructuring is unhelpful and irresponsible under the circumstances.

The CSC, mandated by the majority of affected farmers, urges the government to engage openly and constructively to resolve the compensation issue properly.

Such collaboration is crucial not only for addressing the rights and needs of dispossessed farmers but also for revitalising Zimbabwe’s agricultural sector and strengthening both local and international trust.

[ENDS]

For further information:

Contact Name: Deon Theron

Organisation: Compensation Steering Committee (CSC)

Cell/WhatsApp number: +263 772246233

E-mail: [email protected]