AG wants tough action against white farmers
Tuesday, 18 September 2012 12:25
HARARE – Zimbabwe’s Attorney General Johannes Tomana has urged tough action
against white commercial farmers defying orders to stop working their
fields, and warned provincial courts against referring the evicted farmers’
appeals to the Supreme Court.
The government’s top lawyer said Zimbabwe’s highest court was clogged with
“frivolous appeals” by defiant white farmers, and warned that he will be
taking swift action to ensure noone continues to break the law.
About 300 evicted white farmers remain on their properties, resisting
eviction orders and intimidation by armed militants occupying their land,
awaiting the appeal process.
Mugabe has earmarked 95 percent of white-owned farms for redistribution to
landless blacks.
“If you do not have an offer letter coming from that ministry which is
government’s arm for authorising occupation, you will be committing an
offence in terms of Section 3 of the Gazetted Land Consequential Provisions
Act which makes it an offence and attracts a penalty that is up to two
years.
But quite strangely we have had land acquired for quite a long time now and
continue to have people, white commercial farmers who lost those farms,
continuing to occupy against that provision,” Tomana told state television.
“We could actually accept that it is strange that people continue to violate
and break the law in open day and nothing is done. But of course that is the
point where it becomes clear that we have a problem with the Land Reform
Act.”
The Land Acquisition Act gives government the power to take any land it
chooses without compensation.
Tomana said there seemed to be reluctance to enforce the law.
“So it means there is no clear or rather lack of will power to roll it out
where it should because the issue should be straight forward. Prosecution
should have been the easiest route to deal with the issue,” he said.
The land seizures have decimated the nation’s commercial farming industry
and the latest evictions come amid a potentially devastating food crisis in
Zimbabwe.
The World Food Program estimates that nearly a fifth of the 12,5 million
Zimbabweans are at risk of starvation in the coming year.
Despite promises to redistribute the confiscated land to have-nots, many of
the farms have been given to confidantes of President Robert Mugabe and Zanu
PF leaders.
Mugabe has already warned his party leaders, some of whom are leasing the
expropriated farms to previous white owners, to stop colluding with white
farmers, an action he says is tantamount to reversing the land reform.
Mugabe accuses the white farmers of attempting to perpetuate a racist and
fascist approach of wanting to continue white dominance in the country.
Tomana said the provincial courts were precipitating chaos.
“You find that even frivolous applications that challenge even that which is
not challeangable if you look at the Constitution it says the acquisition
itself is not a justifiable issue so you cannot challenge the acquisition of
land. But if you go to all our courts in the provinces most of them are
culpable for having referred these matters to the Supreme Court on a
challenge that is clearly excluded by the constitution,” Tomana said.
A constitutional amendment, passed in 2005, removed the right of the courts
to adjudicate in land acquisition matters.
Tomana said: “In short those that are in the line of enforcing the law
around the acquisition of land are not effectively upholding that law. The
arm of government which is responsible for acquiring land and resettling
people is the ministry of Lands, it has the authority.”
Mugabe’s critics have accused him of trying to stir up racial tensions ahead
of elections. With thousands of other farms already seized — more than 4 000
of the nation’s 4 500 white farmers have been pushed out of business — the
latest expropriation push will effectively leave Zimbabwe with no white
farmers. – Gift Phiri