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Relief for white Zim farmers
28/03/2008 18:37 - (SA)
Windhoek - A Namibia-based regional tribunal on Friday granted temporary relief to almost 80 white farmers in Zimbabwe, allowing them to remain on their property until the next hearing in their suit on May 28.
"The tribunal grants the application for interim relief," Judge Luis Mondlane, president of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) tribunal, ruled in a case brought before him by one of the farmers, William Michael Campbell.
"All cases, including that of Campbell, will be heard next May," he said.
Campbell had last December sought the court relief for himself, his family and all the employees on his Farm Mount Carmell "from a continued onslaught of invasions and intimidation", court papers said.
The SADC tribunal granted Campbell the interim reprieve until May 28, when a joint application of the other 77 farmers will be heard.
The tribunal was officially convened last April as part of a peer review mechanism within the 14-nation organisation.
Mugabe supporters got the farms
It aims to ensure that the objectives of the SADC treaty, such as human rights and property rights, are upheld.
"The four farmers who are not living on their farms any more are not granted relief, but all the others will be added to the matter of the Campbell case," the judge ruled.
Lawyer Saima Nambinga, who represented all the applicants, expressed his satisfaction with the ruling.
"The ruling is as we expected and we hope the Zimbabwean government will comply as it did with the Campbell case," she told AFP.
Zimbabwe's deputy attorney general Prince Machaya said that the government would abide by the ruling, despite its disagreement.
"We are not satisfied with the ruling, but we will comply," Machaya told AFP.
In 2000, a small group of 4 500 white farmers in Zimbabwe were forced to hand over millions of hectares of land in what President Robert Mugabe trumpeted as a land reform programme to right injustices of the colonial era.
While landless blacks were meant to be the beneficiaries of the controversial programme, some farms ended up in the hands of Mugabe supporters.
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