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Zimbabwean
farmers win legal battle in North Gauteng High Court
AfriForum
June 06, 2011
While white
farmers in Zimbabwe are still facing persecution and oppression,
the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria ruled
in favour of three Zimbabwean farmers today in the case dealing
with the seizure of Zimbabwean assets in South Africa.
The case concerned
an application brought by the Zimbabwean government last year to
reverse the seizure
of Zimbabwean assets in Cape Town by farmers who were assisted by
AfriForum.
The legal battle
started after the Tribunal of the Southern African Development Community
(SADC) had ruled in
November 2008 that Zimbabwe's land-reform processes had been
racist and illegal and that farmers ought to have been compensated
for their farms.
The protocol
introduced by the Tribunal makes provision for the registration
and enforcement of the Tribunal's orders in the member countries
of the SADC.
Based on this
protocol, AfriForum assisted three farmers, Louis Fick, Richard
Etheredge and the late Mike Campbell, in having the ruling of the
SADC Tribunal registered at the North Gauteng High Court.
Shortly after
the ruling had been registered, the farmers seized three properties
of the Zimbabwean government that were no longer used for diplomatic
purposes.
In July last
year, the Zimbabwean government instituted a series of court applications
to have the seizure of its properties and the registration of the
SADC's Tribunal reversed.
AfriForum's
legal representative, Willie Spies, who acted as the farmers'
attorney, said in a statement that the door was now open for the
sale of Zimbabwe's properties in Cape Town that AfriForum
seized last year.
"The ruling
is of historic significance. For probably the first time in international
legal history, a court has ruled that the assets of a country guilty
of human rights violations must be sold at public auction,"
Spies said.
"Arrangements
will be made without delay to have the properties sold at public
auction," he added.
Meanwhile, AfriForum
has learned that an 87-year-old farmer from Gweru, who is a South
African citizen, will be sentenced on 13 June 2011 after he had
been arrested and charged for not leaving his farm voluntarily.
If he is found
guilty, his sentence could include two years' imprisonment
in a Zimbabwean prison. Several calls to the Department of International
Relations in Pretoria and the South African embassy in Harare by
his family to request humanitarian assistance were unsuccessful.
AfriForum is
investigating the possibility of taking legal action against the
South African government in this regard.
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