Philip Rankin had long hoped for compensation after his family farm in Zimbabwe was seized because he was white, but cancer caught up with him first.
The 65-year-old farmer died in early December, almost seven years after he was handcuffed and forcibly removed from his farm by truckloads of police from Robert Mugabe's government.
Like many of the thousands of white Zimbabwean farmers who have suffered the same fate since Mugabe's invasions and takeovers of farms began in the early 2000s, he has found life difficult without the land his family had farmed for more than three decades.
Mr. Rankin found work for a few years, but then developed cancer. His widow Anita said: 'I hoped he would be well so that we could take him out to see the sun again. But that didn't happen."
She said it was now unclear how she would pay his medical bills. "We have valued our farm and were hoping for compensation, but we will think about this after his funeral," she said.
Many other old white farmers who lost their land are now destitute and rely on charity to survive. Although the Zimbabwean government has agreed on paper to compensate them for their losses, they fear their chances of getting money will be reduced because the debt-ridden country has no money to pay them.
Farm invasions by supporters of Mugabe's Zanu PF party began in early 2000 and eventually saw them take over more than 4,000 farms.
Mugabe had promised at independence that he would let white farmers keep their land. But his 'land grab' began after a new political party, the Movement for Democratic Change, emerged in the late 1990s and put him under enormous pressure.
The new party was financially supported by many in the agricultural sector and seriously challenged Zanu PF in the 2000 general election.
Needing a sop to keep his more militant supporters on side, Mugabe began turning a blind eye to those who wanted to conquer the white land. Many invaded farms were taken by leading Zanu PF members, and Mugabe's wife, Grace, helped herself to at least twenty.
The story continues
Many successful black farmers who bought their properties after independence in 1980 were also driven off their land. At least ten white farmers were killed and tens of thousands of farm workers lost their jobs.
Zimbabwe's small but stable economy was devastated, as was the country's political and financial reputation.
Then in 2020, after years of negotiations between several farmer organizations including the Commercial Farmers' Union (CFU), the Valuation Consortium, which valued assets on seized farms, and the government signed an agreement known as the Global Compensation Deed.
Skepticism and division
The Zimbabwean government was reluctant to pay for the land, claiming it had been stolen from Africans, but agreed to pay farmers for the "improvements" they made, such as roads, buildings, dams and irrigation systems.
The deed required the government to pay displaced farmers $3.5 billion over five years for these improvements. Under the agreement, farmers would be paid in US dollars anywhere in the world.
From the beginning there was skepticism and division among the dispossessed peasants. Very few farmers were able to see, let alone examine, the compensation agreement before it was signed.
A group of senior farmers became suspicious of the hasty government deal and sought legal advice from a senior lawyer.
Daniel Tivadar, called to the Bar in Britain and Zimbabwe, provided a detailed legal report that found the agreement was hugely flawed and said any deal should be put to parliament for compensation.
He also noted that the Valuation Consortium would make almost £100 million from the deal.
"It was a sloppy, amateurish deal and that's why we didn't trust it," said an elderly farmer who spoke from Harare this week but declined to be identified.
Still other farmers, especially those who have suffered from lack of funds since being forced to leave their farms, celebrated the compensation deal. Ben Purcell-Gilpin, the long-serving CEO of the CFU, was not one of them and was so disturbed by the agreement that he resigned from his position.
The CFU, which had been a key organization for farmers for generations, lost even more members.
'We get nothing'
Andrew Pascoe, the current president, who is still farming and has expanded his operations in recent years, did not respond to requests for comment.
In the three intervening years, the government has shown no sign of honoring the agreement it signed. Some farmers and other interested parties have been drafting a new agreement behind the scenes, the details of which emerged earlier this month.
This new 'agreement' says the payment for 'improvements' would be government bonds over ten years at an interest rate of 1 percent, which financial experts say would be less than 10 percent of the value of the 2020 agreement.
"We will not accept that deal," said a well-known Zimbabwean farmer who asked not to be named. "We know that the government cannot or does not want to pay us. We don't get anything, so we have to look for other ways to survive."
Angus Selby, one of the younger farmers who were evicted from his land in 2002 and who now lives and works in Britain and the US, said: "The government agreed to give farmers 3.5 billion dollars in hard currency, but have now defaulted three times."
He said this happened partly because the government could not afford the deal and failed to build an international relationship, and "partly because the poor drafting of the agreement did not provide sufficient protection for farmers".
"Fast forward three years and there is an attempt to push through a woefully diluted deal in government bonds over ten years, with only a minority of desperate farmers willing to accept it," he said.
"Any hope for a good deal must be part of a broader agricultural recovery and the restoration of property rights, and must also be supported and shared by the international community."
He also said many have forgotten that white people in Zimbabwe are still constitutionally prohibited from owning agricultural land.
Tony Hawkins, a senior economist in the country, said: "The IMF has described Zimbabwe as a 'debt distressed' country since the early 2000s.
Compensation is a low priority
"In theory it would have been possible to pay $3.5 billion from exports and especially from the inflow of more than $1 billion per year in the diaspora, but the reality is that compensation for agricultural companies is low in the ranking of priorities."
He said the only reason the offset deal exists is because donors and lenders have said that without offsets it would be virtually impossible to attract new capital except from countries such as China, Iran and the UAE.
The only farmers to receive compensation since the land grab were about 350 farmers who negotiated privately with the government. Most did not disclose what they were paid or how they secured payment.
The government also owes compensation to dozens of displaced farmers from several countries with which it had trade and investment agreements.
In recent years, the Dutch government has sent money to the Zimbabwean government to pay its nationals whose farms were seized by Mugabe's colleagues and supporters. So far, Zimbabwe has not repaid that loan.
A recent report by local land experts shows that many 'new farmers' want title deeds for the land they now occupy so that it has a value that they can use to take out loans from commercial banks or even sell the land.
Farmers whose land was seized after 2000 and who are awaiting compensation all still have their original title deeds, so ownership of land seized after 2000 remains contested and complex, but in reality the state controls that land.
Mr Rankin's farm was taken over by Sylvester Nyatsuro, a Zimbabwean born and trained doctor who had emigrated to Britain and later became British.
At the time, Dr. denied. Taking note of the force used to enforce his claim to the farm, Nyatsuro said he was granted ownership by the state in accordance with normal legal process.
Dr. Nyatsuro had no experience in farming and his tobacco crop failed. He returned to Britain after five years. Mr. Rankin's land now lies fallow.
