ICSID appoints tribunal to hear land case
by Own Correspondent Monday 20 December 2010
HARARE – The International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes
(ICSID) has appointed a three-member arbitration tribunal to consider the
request by a German family that is contesting the seizure of its farms by
the Zimbabwean government.
The von Pezold family sought assistance of the Paris-based ICSID in July
after its three farms –Makandi Tea and Coffee Estate, Border Timbers Estate
and Forester Estate in Manicaland – were invaded by members of President
Robert Mugabe’s Zanu (PF) in June.
In case number ARB/10/15, Bernhard von Pezold and others are suing the
government of Zimbabwe for loss of income during the three-week-long
stand-off between the German investors and marauding gangs from Mugabe’s
party.
The case was registered on the roll of the Paris-based tribunal on July 8, a
few days after the Harare regime bowed to pressure from the Germany embassy
to order
The ICSID appointed Canadian lawyer Yves Fortier on December 9 to head the
three-member arbitration tribunal that will hear the von Pezold application
for damages.
The former Canadian ambassador and permanent representative to the United
Nations will be assisted by Malawian lawyer Peter Mutharika and New Zealand’s
David Williams.
Mutharika is ironically the younger brother of Malawi’s President Bingu wa
Mutharika, a close ally of Mugabe.
The younger Mutharika is the current Malawian Justice and Constitutional
Affairs Minister.
The German investors are accusing the Zimbabwean government of failing to
act against the illegal occupants who claimed they were allocated the
properties under Mugabe’s controversial land reform programme.
Harare only ordered the armed and alcoholic mob off the farms after the
Germany government threatened to withhold aid to Zimbabwe, which totalled
more than US$50 million in 2009.
The illegal land occupiers are believed to have looted maize and other crops
valued at more than US$1 million since moving onto the farms on June 18.
The properties are covered by a bilateral investment promotion and
protection agreement (BIPPA) between Zimbabwe and Germany in 1995 but which
came into force in 2000.
The agreement precludes any farms owned by Germans from expropriation under
Zimbabwe’s controversial land reform programme.
This will be the second time the Zimbabwe had been dragged before the ICSID.
A group of Dutch nationals in April 2009 won its case against the Harare
regime after appealing to the ICSID for compensation for loss their
properties.
The Dutch farmers argued that their properties were protected by a bilateral
investment treaty under which Harare promised to pay full compensation to
Dutch nationals in disputes arising out of any investments in Zimbabwe.
Several countries, among them Austria, France, Germany, Mauritius, Holland,
South Africa, Sweden and Malaysia, have signed investment protection
agreements with Zimbabwe.
The chaotic and often violent land reform programme – that Mugabe says was
necessary to ensure blacks also owned some of the best land previously
reserved for whites by former colonial governments – is blamed for
destabilising the mainstay agriculture sector and knocking down food
production by about 60 percent.
Zimbabwe has largely survived largely on food handouts from international
relief agencies since the land reforms began nine years ago.
Mugabe however denies his land redistribution exercise caused hunger and
instead puts the blame on poor weather and a crippling economic crisis
responsible for shortages of seed and fertilizers for farmers to produce
enough food.