A large commercial farm, west of Bulawayo, lies fallow in a 2008 file photo.

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Zimbabwe said it was returning a number of foreign-owned farms that were seized during a violent land grab more than 25 years ago and pay compensation of $146 million (R2.4 billion).

Agriculture Minister Anxious Masuka told lawmakers that the transfer involved 67 properties. Treasury data separately showed the payments would settle claims by property owners from Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the former Yugoslavia.

Masuka said 840 affected farms owned by black farmers were being returned as well as around 400 owned by white farmers.

In 2000, then-Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe encouraged the invasion of white-owned farms by black subsistence farmers and youths, saying it would make up for colonial-era injustices. A number of white farmers — alongside hundreds of their workers — were killed and about 4 000 were forced off their land.

The seizures prompted international sanctions and in 2020 the government agreed to pay white farmers $3.5 billion in compensation as it sought to gain reentry to global capital markets.

It subsequently altered the terms of the deal to include dollar bonds as part of the payoff, but the revamped offer was rejected by a number of the farmers.

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