ZIMBABWE: Commercial farmers win Supreme Court ruling
JOHANNESBURG, 10 November (IRIN) - Zimbabwe's Supreme Court ruled on Friday
that the current round of so called "fast-track" land seizures are illegal.
Colin Cloete, vice-president of the mainly-white Commercial Farmers Union
told IRIN that the commissioner of police along with all eight provincial
governors conceded to the court that the latest round of farm invasions of
both listed and unlisted farms broke the law.
This week, the Supreme Court heard arguments about the constitutionality of
farm seizures. Arguing for the state, the deputy attorney general is
reported to have agreed that the current fast-track resettlement was
chaotic. This is the first Supreme Court ruling against farm invasions in
Zimbabwe. It followed two similar High Court rulings that have been largely
ignored by President Robert Mugabe's government.
A condition for international donor cooperation with land reform in Zimbabwe
is a return to the rule of law. But a recent full-page ZANU-PF advertisement
in an official newspaper read: "Don't let them [whites] use the courts and
the Constitution against the masses." Previous court rulings have not
deterred Mugabe, who has insisted that his government's policy is aimed at
redressing the imbalance in land ownership and to ease rural poverty for
black Zimbabweans. "This is our land and we will do what we want with it,"
he said recently on national television.
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