ZIMBABWEAN President Emmerson Mnangagwa has declared an end to “discrimination along racial lines in agriculture,” with the Agriculture Ministry ruling that white farmers may now receive the same 99-year land leases as are available to their black counterparts.

Under his predecessor Robert Mugabe’s land reform programme many white farmers had their land redistributed to landless peasants and veterans of the country’s independence war, while those who managed to hold onto their land were only allowed five-year leases, making tenure unstable.

Commercial Farmers Union president Peter Steyl said the long leases would “bring a certainty that had been eroded. There is a lot of technical expertise that had been idle. Bringing back evicted farmers will unlock that much-needed expertise.”