‘No prosecution if you killed white farmers’ – President Mugabe

Zimbabwe’s President Mugabe told crowds at a Heroes’ Day celebration earlier this week in the capital, Harare, that people who had killed white farmers during the country’s land reform programme should not face prosecution:

Yes, we have those who were killed when they resisted. We will never prosecute those who killed them. I ask, why we should arrest them?”

During the colonial era, the best farmland in Zimbabwe was reserved for the white population and in 2000, Mr Mugabe spearheaded the seizure of the land from some 4,000 white farmers.

Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe has previously admitted failures in the country’s controversial land reform programme, saying in 2015:

“I think the farms we gave to people are too large. They can’t manage them”.

The sudden seizure of land from white farmers is seen as a key factor in Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown since 2000.