President Robert Mugabe's regime in Zimbabwe, which has mounted a six-year campaign to seize white-owned farms, is beginning to allow some white farmers to return to their land as the country faces starvation and economic collapse.

Since November, 19 white farmers who lost ownership of their land have been granted 99-year government-backed leases on resettled farms. "We wanted to come back, because it's home," one farmer told The Independent on Sunday on his 100-hectare farm outside the capital, Harare, where he is planning to grow maize and tobacco. "Farming has been in my family for generations. We're just happy to be back on the land."

There are only about 600 white farmers left in Zimbabwe, down from 4,500 in 1999. That was the year Mr Mugabe was defeated in a referendum; from 2000 the government decided to "fast-track" land reform in an effort to win over a hostile electorate, resulting in farm seizures by supporters of the ruling Zanu-PF party who claimed to be landless veterans of the country's war for independence. Dozens of white farmers and black farm workers were killed in violent land seizures. Read More

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