SA court defers ruling on Zim farms case
by James Mombe Tuesday 01 March 2011
JOHANNESBURG – South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal on Monday postponed
ruling on an appeal by the government against an earlier court order that it
compensates a South African farmer for farms lost in Zimbabwe.
The farmer, Crawford von Abo, lost his 14 farms in Zimbabwe when they were
expropriated under President Robert Mugabe’s controversial land reform
programme.
The High Court ruled last year that Pretoria should have provided diplomatic
protection for Von Abo’s properties and that because it had not done so it
should compensate the farmer for his loses.
Mugabe has over the past eight years seized white-owned farms for
re-distribution to landless blacks in a programme he says was meant to
correct a colonial and unjust land tenure system that reserved the best
arable land for whites while blacks were crowded on poor soils.
But veteran leader’s chaotic and often violent land reform programme also
saw several farms owned by foreigners and protected under bilateral trade
agreements between Zimbabwe and other countries seized without compensation.
However South Africa and Zimbabwe only signed an investment protection
agreement in November 2009, well after Von Abo had lost his properties. —
ZimOnline