A group of white commercial farmers have joined a campaign group opposing compensation in Treasury Bonds (TBs), the Zimbabwe Independent established this week.
At the signing of the compensation deal in July 2020, the southern African nation noted that it did not have the money and was supposed to issue long-term bonds and jointly approach international donors with the farmers to raise funding.
The deal was inked between the Government of Zimbabwe and the Commercial Farmers Union of Zimbabwe (CFU), the Southern African Commercial Farmers Alliance Zimbabwe (SACFA), and Valuation Consortium (Pvt) Ltd (Valcon) under the Global Compensation Deed.
But another framework called the Farmers Compensation Agreement (FCA), which provides for compensation through 10-year TBs, is being rejected by a majority of farmers, many of whom are joining the Southern African Agri Initiative (SAAI).
SAAI is campaigning for the rejection of TBs.
Legal practitioner, Daniel Tivadar said SAAI had seen its membership rise since the deed was signed. He said this in an 11-page legal opinion presented to the CFU and law firm Honey & Blanckenberg in October last year. However, he did not disclose if those joining SAAI had ditched CFU.
“I am further instructed that up to 900 farmers representing up to 2 500 title deeds have joined SAAI, an alternative farmers’ group since the signing of the Deed,” Tivadar noted in his paper to CFU.
“The SAAI members, I am told, are almost unanimously opposed to the concept of being paid in treasury bonds. This further demonstrates the importance of knowing with certainty on whose behalf the CSC has been authorised to act; and what precisely the CSC has been mandated to work towards.
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“I am aware that a number of the farmers consider the terms of the FCA to be less favourable than the terms of the Deed. I am instructed that farmers representing 782 title deeds voted in favour of the FCA, compared to 3 050 votes in favour of the Deed in 2020. What is clear, however, is that support for the FCA is by no means universal amongst the farmers,” Tivadar added.
Tivadar, however, said it was difficult to separate the FCA from the Deed, adding that execution of the FCA would have consequences for the Deed.
In an article published on its website on March 7, 2023, SAAI said compensation for the affected farmers was still uncertain.
However, it noted that some former white commercial farmers remained optimistic.
“The Zimbabwean government offered the Global Compensation Deed to the farmers in July 2020 but never honoured the agreement,” Tivadar noted. “A new offer involves payment in government bonds that can only be discounted after 14 years, and most of SAAI’s Zimbabwean members do not agree. The Zimbabwean government sporadically pay small sums of money to the most vulnerable old farmers to help them with doctor’s fees and medical bills that are in arrears.
“Unfortunately, the government misuses this as a pistol against the head of the wider farming community by threatening to end these payments if title deed holders don’t accept the new offer. SAAI is now establishing a fund as an alternative source from which the most vulnerable farmers may be helped to survive. SAAI is also creating an investment instrument for Zimbabwean title deeds based on the hope of fair compensation. Farmers can sell their title deeds to the investment instrument or deposit them in it for their own benefit so that the title deeds and accompanying claims will have a longer lifespan than the farmers themselves.”
