Group withholds sale of attached property
http://www.thedailynewszw.com/?p=28679
April 8th, 2010 by admin
By Our Correspondent
JOHANNESBURG – Civil rights group AfriForum, which helped commercial farmers attach a property belonging to the Zimbabwean government, says it will wait to hear from President Robert Mugabe’s government if there were plans to compensate the farmers before selling it.
The group is helping attach properties for loss the farmers suffered as a result of Mugabe’s controversial land reform. AfriForum also said it would wait before going ahead to attach three others properties in the same city
of Kenilworth.
The attached R2,5 million property is in Kenilworth, Cape Town while the other three are in Zonneblom and Wynberg.
“We will keep things as they are at the moment,” said Willie Spies, of AfriForum who is acting as a lawyer for the farmers.
“We are not going to sell the house immediately but wait for the response from the Zimbabweans to see if they are going to act on compensating the farmers.”
He emphasised that the decision withhold sale was not in any way influenced by the South African government’s intention to appeal against the attachment of the property.
“This process is about helping Zimbabweans by showing them that it’s possible for civil society to institute civil sanctions against a regime that does not help its people.”
In November 2008, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Tribunal ruled in favour of Michael Campbell and 78 Zimbabwean farmers that the land reform programme in the country was “racist and unlawful”.
In June last year, the Tribunal issued a contempt ruling against the Zimbabwe government before the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria registered the tribunal’s rulings this year on February 26.
But Zimbabwe Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa described AfriForum’s move as a “day dream,” saying the properties could not be attached because they are under diplomatic protection, while Zimbabwe’s Ambassador to South Africa, Simon Khaya Moyo, called it a “nonsensical move by a racist organisation.”
Meanwhile, the South African government has said it will appeal a ruling by the North Gauteng which registered the SADC ruling giving AfriForum the leeway to attach Zimbabwean properties.
A Harare High Court Judge Bharat Patel in January ruled that Zimbabwe was bound by rulings of the regional court but said the order on farm seizures could not be implemented because it was against public policy.
In blocking the Tribunal order, Patel said its enforcement would effectively undo Mugabe’s land reforms of the past decade, with all white farmers who lost land expected to use the judgment to claim their properties back.
The judge said this would require the government to evict tens of thousands of black families resettled on farms seized from whites in order to return the land to lawful owners, a move he described as a “political enormity”
with potential to cause upheaval in Zimbabwe.
The decade-long farm invasions which the 86-year-old Mugabe says were necessary to ensure blacks also had access to arable land they were denied by previous white-led governments have been blamed for plunging Zimbabwe into food shortages.