Harare - Zimbabwe is ready to allow the return of white farmers who were driven off their farms under President Robert Mugabe's land reform program, the agriculture minister told AFP on Wednesday.
But minister Joseph Made denied that the new openness toward white farmers marked an about-face in land reform policies that have been widely criticised as a failure, triggering economic meltdown in what was once the breadbasket of southern Africa.
"Land is available to every Zimbabwean who wants it," said Made, adding that the government has held several meetings with dispossessed farmers who want land to farm.
"We have met with farmers represented by the unions but this does not mean they will get the land automatically. People will first be interviewed be it black or white, and if one is successful, you will be given land."
The predominantly white Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) says it has submitted applications for at least 200 farmers who want to be allocated farmland under a long-term leasing scheme.
Only 600 remaining farmers
Around 4 000 white farmers have lost their land since Mugabe launched his fast-track land reform program in 2000 to redress the imbalances in land ownership from the colonial era.
Fewer than 600 farmers remain on their properties in Zimbabwe, once the breadbasket of southern Africa.
"The land reform is irreversible, there is no shift in government policy when white farmers apply for land. They will be treated like every other Zimbabwean," Made said.
Some of the white farmers have applied to return to the land lost in the seizures while others have requested permission to farm on other properties, according to CFU officials.
The decision to consider the return of white farmers was made following a government land audit. While the results are to be made public in June, the audit is widely expected to show that new black farmers have failed to keep production at satisfactory levels.
Desperate to get back
Aid agencies say at least four million Zimbabweans out of a population of 13 million will require food aid until the next harvest in May.
"We will not displace people who are already on the land, but if this has to be done, this will be done in an orderly manner," Made said.
Many farmers are desperate to get back their land, said a farmer who spoke on condition of anonymity, but he cautioned that the talks with the government had yet to yield a concrete result.
"We have heard plenty, but we have not seen anything," said the farmer from southern Masvingo province.
"There is a huge amount of mistrust. There are no hard and fast rules and there is a lot politicking.
Need to revive production
"Maybe there is a realisation that there is need to revive agricultural production. We are interested in production. That's all we are interested in," he said.
In August last year parliament passed constitutional reforms turning all farms into state land and preventing dispossessed farmers from seeking legal recourse.
Critics blame the land grabs for Zimbabwe's downward spiral into poverty and hunger.
The majority of the beneficiaries of the land reforms lacked farming skills and rely on government handouts.
But the government has maintained that consecutive years of drought are responsible for the collapse in agriculture, which accounted for 40% of the economy before 2000.