Mugabe: Land grabs the ‘best thing’ to happen to Zim

The land grabs that drove thousands of white farmers and their black workers off their land in Zimbabwe over the past decade were the “best thing that could ever have happened to an African country”, according to President Robert Mugabe. In an interview with CNN television in New York late on Thursday, a defiant Mugabe (85) defended the controversial land-reform programme, saying: “Zimbabwe belongs to the Zimbabweans, pure and simple.” Mugabe was in the US to attend the United Nations General Assembly, where he was due to give a speech on Friday. While most of the white farmers that were thrown off the land are also Zimbabweans, Mugabe said the expropriations were justified because the farmers are mostly descended from British settlers, who took the land from black Zimbabweans during the colonial era.