MEDIA STATEMENT
AfriForum
30 March 2010
AfriForum attaches luxury property of Zimbabwe in Cape Town
The civil rights initiative, AfriForum, today instructed the Sheriff of Cape Town to attach a luxury property of the Zimbabwean government, a 28 Salisbury Road, Cape Town, on behalf of Zimbabwean farmers.
This follows after a legal battle spanning several months, undertaken by AfriForum on behalf of farmers in Zimbabwe, which forms part of AfriForum’s civil sanction campaign against Zimbabwe.
In November 2008, the SADC Tribunal ruled in favour of Mr Michael Campbell and 78 other Zimbabwean farmers that the Zimbabwean Government’s land reform programme was racist and unlawful. In his reaction to this, President Robert Mugabe described the ruling as “nonsense and of no consequence” to Zimbabwe. The tribunal followed up its ruling with a contempt ruling and costs order in June 2009.
On26 February 2010, the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria registered these rulings in South Africa. They are now rulings of a South African court and as such the cost order is a judgement that can be executed locally.
In 2009 AfriForum also launched a very successful campaign when it became known that an international dairy company was purchasing milk from a farm that had been confiscated by the Mugabe regime and transferred to President Mugabe’s wife, Ms Grace Mugabe. International pressure led to a decision by the dairy company not to purchase milk from the said farm.
The fate of South African farmers
Mr Louis Fick (the first applicant in the current legal process) is a South African citizen farming on Friedawil in the Chinhoyi district. His farm was earmarked for land redistribution* and he was effectively chased off his land last year. At the moment, Mr Fick is standing trial on criminal charges that he “failed to co-operate with the Zimbabwean land reform programme”. If found guilty, he faces a sentence of two years in a Zimbabwean jail. Mr Fick could not join today’s process as he is on Friedawil to try and recover his remaining personal movable assets from the homestead, after the home had been burgled and looted.
Last year when it became known that the South African Government was on the verge of entering a bilateral investment agreement that would exclude South African farmers from protection, AfriForum assisted Mr Fick in an attempt to obtain an interdict against the signing of such a discriminating treaty.
The matter was settled, and the South African Government recommitted itself to the protection of South African farmers, as well as to the upholding of the already mentioned SADC Tribunal’s ruling.
AfriForum regards it as our duty to hold the South African Government to these commitments. More particulars of future legal and civil action will be announced in due course.
Willie Spies
Legal Representative: AfriForum
Cell: 083 676 0639
E-mail: [email protected]
Background information:
* Louis Fick has been subjected to sustained unlawful behaviour at the hands of Zimbabwe’s Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank, Edward Mashiringwani.
Mashiringwani has taken over more than 98 percent of Fick’s Friedawil farm and he, along with his farm manager Shepherd Makoni and supporters, are responsible for a wide range of abuses, including violence, theft, arson and gross animal cruelty.
During September 2009, the Deputy Governor denied Fick access to about 4,000 pigs, refusing to allow him to feed or water them, in an attempt to use animal cruelty to force Fick to give up the last of his highly profitable piggeries.
In October 2009, five of Fick’s farm workers were shot and a number of their homes were burnt to the ground.
The person allegedly responsible for the shootings was “Tichiona”, an employee of Mashiringwani,
While hundreds of thousands of workers have been forced off the land, “the land reform” programme has benefited only the elite – security force officers, Politburo members, their family members and even judges.