Harare - Zimbabwe wants to amend its Land Act to make it easier for President Robert Mugabe's government to forcibly acquire white-owned farms for redistribution among blacks, the official Herald newspaper reported on Monday.
The paper said the amendments were meant to "consolidate the gains of land reform and remove remaining bottlenecks in the acquisition process".
A major amendment would be the abolition of a requirement that the initial notice of acquisition should be served personally upon the owner of the land to be acquired. The notice would now simply be published in a government gazette.
"This (earlier) provision has proved difficult to implement under the land reform programme because often the owner no longer occupies the land and cannot otherwise be located," the Herald quoted the amendment bill as stating.
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Mugabe stirred controversy in 2000 when he allowed militants loyal to his ruling Zanu-PF party to occupy white-owned farms in support of his government's land reforms.
He says land reform is meant to correct ownership imbalances created by colonialism, which put the bulk of Zimbabwe's prime farm land in the hands of minority whites.
The government has previously accused white farmers of resorting to legal technicalities to slow down its compulsory acquisition of their property under the programme.
Critics say that although land reform has benefited thousands of peasants, it was government ministers and senior officials from Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF government who seized the most productive farms.
Aid agencies say disruption to agricultural activity caused by the farm seizures is partly to blame for chronic food shortages likely to affect more than five million Zimbabweans by year-end.
Mugabe, 79, denies that skewed government policies have ravaged the economy, but says it has been sabotaged by his local and foreign critics in retaliation for the land programme.
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