Zimbabwe’s new agriculture minister on Wednesday ordered illegal occupiers of farms to vacate the land immediately, a move that could ultimately see some white farmers who say they were unfairly evicted coming back to farming again.

Land is an emotional in the southern African nation after the violent invasion of white-owned farms in 2000 by supporters of former president Robert Mugabe, who defended the seizures as a necessary redress of colonial-era imbalances.

“All those who were illegally settled or who just settled themselves on resettlement land should vacate immediately,” the minister, Perrance Shiri, was quoted as saying by the website of the government-owned Herald newspaper after meeting provincial ministers in Harare.