By Leopold Munhende

SOUTH Africa’s Julius Malema has described as treasonous, President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s agreement to a US$3.5 billion payout to white farmers whose farms were expropriated under the controversial land reform programme in the early 2000s.

In a statement, Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) added the deal between Mnangagwa and the white farmers was a desperate attempt to please the West.

The EFF said the financial settlement was far from ending Zimbabwe’s never-ending economic and political crises.

“We are of the view that Mnangagwa is either deeply misinformed about the real causes of the crisis in Zimbabwe or is simply capitulating to the pressure from the white supremacist world,” the EFF said.

“Either way, the treasonous act of paying to white settlers money that Zimbabwe does not have will not resolve the crisis in Zimbabwe which is essentially a political crisis resulting from years of mismanagement at the centre of which Mnangagwa features prominently,” reads the statement.

Mnangagwa signed an agreement last Wednesday with representatives of former white farmers at State House in Harare.

The agreement seeks to end an almost two-decade-long stand-off between Zimbabwe and the West following a chaotic land reform programme that hounded thousands of white commercial farmers off their productive farms.

According to the agreement, the farmers will be paid compensation for infrastructural development, and not for the land itself.

However, the EFF added: “Mnangagwa is now not only pissing on the graves of the many heroic men and women who laid down their lives for the return of Zimbabwean land but he is also desecrating on the legacy of (late President) Robert Mugabe, from whom he violently took power in an unprincipled coup.

“Mnangagwa will be remembered as a clueless, ideological amoeba who was prepared to trade off important gains of the struggle in order to be liked by whites. We deeply condemn the act of betrayal by Mnangagwa and call on ordinary Zimbabweans to reject the wasteful use of money that should be directed towards building hospitals in Zimbabwe.”

In South Africa, the EFF is currently pushing for land expropriation without any compensation.