A group of white farmers in Zimbabwe is pinning hopes on US President Donald Trump’s administration to help win billions of dollars in compensation.
Mercury Public Affairs, a US lobbying firm with ties to Trump, has agreed to make the farmers’ case to American politicians and won’t charge them, according to a Foreign Agents Registration Act filing.
Bryan Lanza, a partner at Mercury who is involved in the project according to a letter included in the filing, previously served as a senior campaign adviser to Trump and communications director on the president’s first transition team. White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles is a former Mercury co-chair.
Mercury previously represented the Zimbabwe government between 2019 and 2021, a contract in which Zimbabwe paid a monthly retainer of US$90,000 to lobby against sanctions in Washington. The US imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe in 2001, partly due to land reform.
By turning to Mercury, the farmers are tapping into the US administration’s view that white people in southern Africa are being discriminated against by Black-majority governments. Trump has repeatedly advanced a widely debunked claim that South Africa is allowing a genocide against white Afrikaner farmers and has offered them refugee status.
“The services you will provide include contacting appropriate officials in the current administration and Congress to promote paying the Zimbabwean farmers,” Dror Besserglik, managing director of Johannesburg-based OB Projects Management, which was engaged by a Zimbabwean farmers’ group, said in a December 2 letter addressed to Lanza.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government agreed in 2020 to pay farmers US$3.5 billion in compensation. Government has budgeted US$10 million in 2026 to compensate about 740 white farmers. Compensation is paid only for improvements on the land, and not the land itself.
The farmer’s plight has already garnered Republican support. Brian Mast, a Florida congressman and chairman of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, in September introduced legislation seeking to block Zimbabwe from securing new funding from the International Monetary Fund and World Bank until it paid the compensation. The bill has been passed by the committee to the House, but is yet to advance further.
OB Projects, headed by South African Oded Besserglik, was contracted by Zimbabwe’s Property and Farm Compensation Association, or Profca. In his letter to Mercury, Dror Besserglik said OB Projects was also working on behalf of the Commercial Farmers Union, the Southern African Commercial Farmers Alliance and the Valuation Consortium Ltd.
The CFU, Zimbabwe’s oldest and biggest group representing commercial farmers, was unaware of the initiative, according to Liam Philp, its president. He said he contacted Profca representatives after Bloomberg showed him the document uploaded by Mercury and was told the CFU had been included by “mistake.” He is seeking more information.
OB Projects has tasked Mercury with lobbying the US government to support the clearance of Zimbabwe’s debt and the creation of new financing arrangements to “generate the funds necessary to satisfy” the government’s obligations to the farmers, Dror Besserglik said in the letter.
Bloomberg/additional reporting by newZWire
ALSO READ
Zimbabwe has signed a US$3.5bn compensation deal with white farmers. Here’s what you need to know
