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Zim to ignore tribunal rulingDecember 2, 2008
Brigitte Weidlich
The NamibianTHE government of Zimbabwe has rejected a regional court ruling that said 78 white Zimbab-weans could keep their farms despite that country's land reform scheme, according the state newspaper The Herald in Harare.
"They (the SADC Tribunal) are day-dreaming because we are not going to reverse the land reform exercise," the Minister of State for National Security, Lands, Land Reform and Resettlement, Didymus Mutasa, told the newspaper in its Monday edition.
"There is nothing special about the 75 farmers and we will take more farms.
It's not discrimination against farmers, but correcting land imbalances," he added.
Mutasa was reacting to Friday's ruling by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Tribunal in Windhoek that said the farmers could keep their farms because Zimbabwe's land reform scheme had discriminated against them.
Judge Luis Mondlane, president of the Tribunal, on Friday said Zimbabwe had violated the treaty governing the 15-nation regional bloc by trying to seize the white-owned farms.
Rather than respect the ruling, the government would step up its land reform programme and acquire remaining white-owned farms, Mutasa told The Herald.
"The SADC Tribunal would not stall the land reform programme to please former colonial masters," he added.
In Friday's ruling, Judge Mondlane said: "The 78 applicants have a clear legal title [to their farms] and were denied access to the judiciary locally."
Three of the 78 farmers have already been forced from their land, and the tribunal ruled that Zimbabwe had also violated the treaty by failing to pay them fair compensation.
For the remaining 75 farmers, Mondlane ordered Zimbabwe's government "to take all measures to protect the possessions and ownership" of their land.
"No actions may be taken by insurgents and others to interfere with or disturb the peaceful activities of the remaining 75 applicants," the Judge said.
It was the first major ruling by the court since it first convened in April last year.
By treaty, the court's rulings are binding.
This was confirmed by Justice Charles Mkandawire, Registrar at the Tribunal.
"The decisions of the SADC tribunal are binding and final as stipulated in the SADC treaty and the SADC protocol," he told The Namibian yesterday.
"There is no appeal mechanism," Mkandawire added.
If a member state fails to comply, this can be reported to the Tribunal again and it will in turn report this to the annual SADC summit to take appropriate action.
The SADC Tribunal was created as part of a peer review mechanism within the organisation.
It aims to ensure that the objectives of SADC's founding treaty, including human rights and property rights, are upheld.
Meanwhile, the Legal Assistance Centre (LAC) in Windhoek has described Friday's ruling a "very significant judgement".
"It is now confirmed by SADC's highest judicial body that the government of Zimbabwe violated its domestic and international laws when it embarked on the chaotic and disastrous land reform programme," LAC Director Norman Tjombe said yesterday.
"The judgement is also significant for other SADC countries: Namibia and South Africa are still struggling with the difficult tasks of reforming the racially skewed land ownership, and the Tribunal's judgement will offer valuable guidance in those processes.
It is now upon the SADC Summit to follow suit and ensure the full implementation of the judgement," said Tjombe.
"Zimbabwe is notorious for ignoring court orders, but I am sure that the member states will now act more firmly on the government of Zimbabwe and Robert Mugabe to ensure the compliance with the law.
"Otherwise, the exercise of approaching the Tribunal and the very existence of the Tribunal will be made nugatory and irrelevant," Tjombe said.
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