Author: Elizabeth Mpofu, Raj Patel, Varsha Gandikota-Nellutla
Published on: 03/04/2025 | 00:00:00
AI Summary:
On February 7, the White House cut aid to South Africa, citing a nonexistent threat to white farmers from government land expropriation. In July 2020, Zimbabwe agreed to pay $3.5bn in compensation to approximately 4,000 white settler landowners for property redistributed during land reforms. This sum, five times the size of Zimbabwe’s May 2020 COVID stimulus plan, was pledged at a time when the United Nations warned the country was “on the brink of man-made starvation By 2000, Mugabe’s government began compulsory land redistribution. The programme had flaws – inadequate support for new farmers and insufficient resources to rebuild agricultural supply chains. But contrary to disaster narratives, thousands of landless Zimbabweans benefitted while a small elite of white settlers lost their privileged status. US officials insist that ZDERA is “a law, not a sanction”, but this is a distinction without a difference. The Trump administration recently attacked South Africa’s far more cautious land reform efforts, falsely claiming the government was “seizing land from white farmers” This rhetoric ignores that South Africa's land reform seeks to correct apartheid-era dispossession.
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