SADC rules Zim defied its tribunal on land

WINDHOEK (AFP) — Zimbabwe has refused to comply with a regional tribunal’s order to allow 78 white farmers to keep their land, a judge said Friday, saying the court would refer the case to Southern African leaders.

The tribunal of the South African Development Community (SADC) last year ruled that the 78 farmers could remain on their land, which was targetted for resettlement by black farmers under President Robert Mugabe’s land reform scheme.

But Mugabe has openly dismissed the verdict, and the farmers’ lawyer returned to court Friday to seek further action to enforce the ruling.

“The applicants showed ample material of the state of Zimbabwe?s non-compliance (with the earlier ruling) and the tribunal will report its findings to the SADC summit,” Justice Ariranga Pillay said.

The lawyer for the farmers, Jeremy Gauntlett, urged the court to recommend sanctions or Zimbabwe’s expulsion from SADC.

“We urgently ask the SADC tribunal to put this matter before the next summit of the SADC heads of states next August for possibly imposing sanctions against Zimbabwe, laying down a timetable for compliance — otherwise expulsion from SADC,” Gauntlett said.

“Despite the tribunal ruling of last November… there have been forced and aggressive invasions on the farms of Mike Campbell and Richard Etheredge,” Gauntlett added.

The lawyer quoted Mugabe, who publicly said earlier this year that the ruling was “nonsense and of no consequence.”

“This defiance not only threatens the lives of the farmers who endured several invasions over the past few weeks and their crops rot on their land, but also the authority of this regional tribunal,” Gauntlett argued.

Zimbabwe’s deputy attorney general Prince Machaya declined to enter a defence.

“I have no instructions to make a submission,” he told the tribunal.

Although SADC members are bound by treaty to respect the court’s decisions, the judges have no independent power to enforce their rulings.

The land case was the first major ruling by the court since it first convened in April last year.

Eight years ago Zimbabwe began seizing white-owned farms to resettle them with landless blacks, but the chaotic programme was plagued by deadly violence and some farms ended up in the hands of Mugabe’s allies.

In Zimbabwe and many neighbouring countries, white settlers took most of the best farmland during colonial times. Now African nations face a dilemma in how to bring black farmers back onto the land without disrupting food production.

Zimbabwe gave much of its land to inexperienced farmers and provided them little support, causing an enormous drop in food production that has left the country dependent on foreign food aid.