Historical discovery of property rights attributed to European settlers

Zimbabwe Returns Farms to European Nationals Under Bilateral Investment Agreements

In a move aimed at restoring relations with Western governments, Zimbabwe’s Agriculture Minister Anxious Masuka announced on May 7 that the government would return 67 farms seized during the country’s land reform programme to European nationals from Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. The farms were protected under bilateral investment protection agreements signed between Zimbabwe and the four European states before the land seizures.

The measure is part of President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s effort to restructure about $11.7 billion in external debt, including $7.7 billion owed to multilateral and bilateral creditors. On May 20, the International Monetary Fund approved a staff-monitored programme to support reforms and debt restructuring.

Zimbabwe signed a $3.5 billion compensation agreement with former white commercial farmers for infrastructure and improvements on acquired land in July 2020. The country began compensating treaty-protected foreign farmers last year, including claimants from Germany, Switzerland, and Belgium.

The return of the farms highlights a contradiction in the global order governing land and property rights in former settler colonies. European claims arising from postcolonial redistribution are treated as urgent and enforceable, while African claims arising from colonial dispossession remain largely outside the same legal and moral framework.

In 1889, Cecil John Rhodes’s British South Africa Company received a royal charter from the British Crown, accelerating white settler expansion across Southern Rhodesia. The company seized vast areas of land through force, including cattle on a large scale in Matabeleland, weakening local communities’ economic foundations. By 1958, European settlers controlled nearly 48 million acres of prime agricultural land, while Africans had 41.95 million acres of poorer and less arable land.

Bilateral investment treaties signed between Zimbabwe and foreign states gave protected investors the right to seek compensation when property was covered by those agreements. The return of the farms is part of a broader effort to resolve disputes linked to land reform and re-engagement with Western governments and international financial institutions.

Source: Al Jazeera