Zimbabwe Vice President Urges Mnangagwa Govt to Appropriate Land for Youth

WASHINGTON — Vice President Kembo Mohadi says the Zimbabwean government should set aside land for young people who are not beneficiaries of the country’s land redistribution exercise, which resulted in the forced removal of thousands of white commercial farmers from their prime land in 2000.

Addressing members of the Zanu PF Youth League and businesspeople involved in seed production at the ruling party’s headquarters in Harare on Wednesday, Mohadi said youth need land in order to secure Zimbabwe’s future.

“To government, to our ministries especially the Ministry of Lands … The youth that are here I’m told are missing from those that have got the land and those that can’t use their land adequately … You (have to) appropriate some land or give these youth some land from which they can do their farming. Yes, we have got established farmers that are into farming but we would want the young generation to be given what they want and let them use it because the future is theirs and this country belongs to them.”

Some observers claim that the land reform program devastated the agriculture sector following the violence invasion of white-owned farms by supporters of the late former president Robert Mugabe, who was toppled in defacto military coup in 2017.

Mugabe claimed that the land seizures were a necessary redress of colonial imbalances as most of the fertile land by 2000 was in the hands of few white farmers.