THE government will repossess farms that continue to lie idle while farmers failing to make improvements on their properties also risk lose their land, a cabinet minister has warned.

Agriculture Minister Herbert Murerwa said some beneficiaries of the government’s controversial land reforms were undermining the programme by failing to make productive use of their farms.

"We are now going to take the farms back because they are tarnishing our image as Zanu PF,” Murerwa said in an interview.

"If they are not utilising the farms, we will repossess them."

Murerwa’s threat comes in the wake of reports that some new farmers were also leasing their properties to white farmers who were evicted from the same properties.

At least 120 evicted white farmers have reportedly returned to their former land through leasehold deals under which the parties share profits.

The reports enraged President Robert Mugabe who warned that the deals threatened to reverse his party’s empowerment programmes.

“It is grossly disturbing to learn of the extent to which some of our people have gone towards literally giving back the land to white farmers, all for a pittance of the farm profits at the end of the season,” Mugabe told a recent meeting of Zanu PF’s central committee.

The Zanu PF leader added: “When will this slavish regard; slavish mentality of hero worshipping the white man, our coloniser just yesterday, end, in order to allow our people to exercise and realise their full potential? That slavish mentality should end.”