ZIMBABWE: The last of Zimbabwe's white-owned farms will soon be targeted for seizure, according to the government's state security minister Didymus Mutasa.
The government will confiscate the remaining farms under its resettlement programme - which started in 2000 with the seizure of thousands of white-owned farms - so that every native black Zimbabwean has access to a piece of land, Minister Mutasa said in an interview.
"We are going to take the land from whites and we are not mincing our words about that . . . we will not rest until every black person, every native Zimbabwean has a piece of land," he told Zimonline.
The minister's comment comes a week after President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party, which holds a two-thirds majority in parliament, managed to push through a set of constitutional amendments which, among other things, prevent individuals from contesting land seizures through the courts.
Despite having their land seized by the government as part of an ongoing resettlement programme that began in 2000, many of the country's 4,500 white farmers kept the deeds for their land in the hope it would offer them an avenue of recourse in the future.
The new constitutional amendments state that farmers whose land has been confiscated must hand over the deeds to their land within 30 days of the seizure.
Mr Mugabe's critics say the land seizures have allowed him to reward loyal individuals with presents of large tracts of land, and the tactic has led to widespread food shortages.