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Big blow for white Zim farmers
06/11/2007 15:44 - (SA)
Harare - Zimbabwe's supreme court, regarded as a handpicked ally of President Robert Mugabe, has backed controversial legislation that allows the government to take farm equipment belonging to white farmers, in the name of the regime's often-violent campaign to seize white-owned land.
The state-run daily Herald newspaper said the supreme court had dismissed an application by three white farmers and a company where their equipment had been stored, for the Acquisition of Farm Equipment Act to be declared unconstitutional.
"The application fails and is hereby dismissed," said Chief Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku. The law allows the government to seize a farmer's equipment and machinery as part of the confiscation of his land. It stipulates that compensation be paid within five years.
Chidyausiku said the period did not conflict with the constitution, which declares that compensation should be paid "within a reasonable period of time".
There are an estimated 350 white farmers left on at least a part of their farms, out of 4 500 who were farming in 2000 when Mugabe unleashed thousands of ruling party supporters to drive the whites off their land.
Land grabs
About 15 whites and 40 of their labourers were murdered during the illegal land grab, and about a million farm workers and their families were displaced. The formerly highly productive agricultural industry has since collapsed, triggering the breakdown of the national economy and famine has become endemic.
The supreme court has been denounced by the International Bar Council for being openly pro-government. All eight members of the court are known to have been given farms illegally seized from their white owners.
Along with the farms, farm invaders have stolen up to US$2.5bn worth of farm vehicles and irrigation equipment, pumps, engines, seeds, crop chemicals, down to the contents of their liquor cabinets, according to collations of claims for seized property by the Justice for Agriculture Trust, which helps dispossessed farmers with legal advice.
Nearly all of the equipment and machinery has either been cannibalised and sold or abandoned, according to farmers' organisations.
"The act is fundamentally unconstitutional," said JAG chief executive officer John Worsely-Worswick. "The government can take the tools of farmers' trade, do their own valuation and then pay them out over five years in a hyperinflationary environment. It's daylight robbery."
Mugabe's clan 'stole everything'
Only on about 16 occasions did the state use the law to seize white farmers' equipment, and lost every case when it they were taken to the high court.
"They (Mugabe's government and his supporters) have stolen everything," said Worsely-Worswick. "Mostly it's been at gunpoint by the military, the secret police or the ruling party youth.
"The act came in 2004, but they were stealing equipment from the beginning. The act was only brought in to legalise what they had taken so far. But they never won a single case when they were challenged in the high court."
The ruling announced on Tuesday "is not a judgment in law at all, it's a racially biased political judgement," he said.
Even the government's own assessments of the results of Mugabe's "revolutionary land reform programme" have shown that the ruling party and military elite are the major beneficiaries of illegally seized land, while output is only a tiny fraction of what it was before 2000.
Mother of all seasons
Thousands of peasants settled on seized white land have been driven off to make way for the politically well connected.
The government has declared that this summer cropping season will be "the mother of all agricultural seasons" and it has spent millions of US dollars on importing tractors, combine harvesters and other farm equipment.
However, with the rainy season already underway, seed and fertiliser is only available in small quantities on the black market at exorbitant prices, despite Mugabe's assurances ample supplies would be cheaply available.
Farmers who manage to find seed and chemicals, then have to contend with critical shortages of diesel and constant electricity blackouts.
- Sapa-dpa
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