Posted on 12/05/2001 12:08:25 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
HARARE, Zimbabwe -- Zimbabwe's top court has declared the government's plan to seize white-owned farms legal, overturning its own previous ruling that the seizures were unconstitutional.
In a judgment released Tuesday, four of the five Supreme Court justices appointed to hear the new seizure case said they were satisfied the government's "fast track" land nationalization program was lawful and "sufficiently complied" with the constitution.
Last year's Supreme Court ruling declared the government's methods of land seizures illegal and in breach of constitutional ownership rights and government land laws.
Some of the judges who made that ruling have been replaced in recent months.
Four of the five judges hearing the new case, including Chief Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku, were appointed recently by President Robert Mugabe. Those four voted to uphold the government's land seizure program.
The Supreme Court traditionally had only five judges until Mugabe expanded the bench to eight in July, adding three judges considered loyal to the ruling party. The chief justice usually appoints small panels of judges to hear each case.
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change has described the court's expansion as a political ploy designed to turn the court into a government puppet.
Armed ruling party militants have occupied more than 1,700 white-owned farms since March 2000, demanding they be redistributed to landless blacks. The government has listed some 4,500 properties -- about 95 percent of farm land owned by whites -- for nationalization without compensation and last month warned about 800 farmers they had three months to vacate their land and homes.
Monday's court ruling rejected white farmers' assertions that the land seizures were taking place amid violence and a breakdown of law and order in farming districts.
It said the government had met the previous court's order to prove it had restored law and order and a sustainable land reform program in those districts.
Though it was not disputed that clashes took place on farms, "by definition, the concept of rule of law foresees a situation in which behavior prescribed as criminal will occur. The presence of the rule of law does not mean a totally crime free environment," the court said.
Adrian de Bourbon, the lawyer for the Commercial Farmers Union, had asked Chidyausiku and two other new appointees to recuse themselves from the hearing, alleging they had shown open allegiance to the ruling party and its land seizures.
None of the judges stepped down.
Monday's ruling described de Bourbon's request as "unbridled arrogance and insolence."
"This is the first and last time such contempt of this court will go unpunished," it said.
A spokesman for the union said farmers were surprised and disappointed by the decision.
"The ruling does not seem to be based on the strict application of the law or the rules of natural justice, but on a political argument," the spokesman said.
"We are obviously surprised and shocked by this because this is the highest court. But we hope the government will still find the wisdom to be reasonable," he said.
Judges have been under mounting pressure from the government and ruling party militants. Chief Justice Anthony Gubbay was forced out after the government warned him and other judges they would not be protected from ruling party militants, who stormed the Supreme Court last December.
"More than 300 years ago, the African was subjugated to colonial rule. In the process, we lost everything, including our right to our own names," the premier of the province, Ngoako Ramatlhodi, told the provincial legislature last month. "With that our sense of self-esteem suffered a massive blow. Part of the task of the liberation struggle is to regain the humanity of the Africans, including their right to call themselves by their own names."
The news was met by howls of protest from Afrikaners, the white descendents of South Africa's Dutch settlers and the architects of the old apartheid regime. They viewed the changes as an attack on their culture. Most offensive, they said, were plans for the provincial capital, Pietersburg - a frontier town of broad avenues and flowering trees named after a white Afrikaner general - to become Polokwane, meaning place of peace.
Pietersburg's white residents, who make up the majority of the city's population, took to the streets in protest, threatening to withhold their taxes if they lost their city's historic name.
"What I want to know is what is really behind this? Is it a message to whites to pack their bags and go? Is it racism?" asked Koos Kemp, the former mayor of Pietersburg, who is leading a fight to defend the old South African names.
The controversy is not isolated to Limpopo province. In recent weeks, South Africa has experienced a wave of name changes proposed by local governments - run by the black majority African National Congress party - who want to reclaim the country's black heritage. [End Excerpt]
BREAKING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
RIGHT IN SEATTLE COURT RULES ZIMBABWE IN DEFAULT!
MUGABE LOOSES ALL!
COFFEE ANNON AGREE'S
more at 11
Across hundreds of miles of seemingly idyllic Zimbabwean countryside, similar stories were repeated again and again last week.
Mthoko Ncube, 25, was in hiding at a 'safe house' occupied by the opposition in Matabeleland. He had been released from hospital 24 hours earlier after being seized, with 12 other friends, as he walked through a rural area last month. None of the group, which included three girls, was carrying a Zanu membership card.
They were taken to a camp on a farm commandeered as a base for 300 militiamen. One of the girls was taken to an outbuilding. The rest of captives were told to do physical exercises: press-ups, sit-ups and running on the spot. They were then forced to strip and graze on grass. Attempts to resist brought blows from clubs and sjamboks . Then they, too, were tortured under running taps.
'I did not ask the girl they took about what happened to her,' said Ncube. 'I could see different men going over to the outbuilding while they were beating me.'
………… Asked whether MDC supporters would be too scared to vote, he added: 'The people have had enough. This election is about life and death. People have had enough and they will turn out in their millions to rid Zimbabwe of Uncle Bob. The people will vote for change. The people want change.'
………. The opposition, which believes in non-violence to achieve its aims, fears that there will be a mass uprising if Mugabe rigs the election or introduces martial law. Senior MDC officials claim they do not have enough weapons to wage a war against Mugabe, who has reportedly ordered home more than 8,000 soldiers fighting over 'blood' diamonds in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
'We don't know what will happen,' said Sibanda as the sun burned below the African horizon, heralding another night of violence in isolated rural communities. 'If things are fair, we will win. If they are not, who knows? The people blame Mugabe, not whites, for our troubles. We cannot hold the people back forever.' [End Excerpts]
Mugabe cash flow hints he might flee-- PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe has sent millions of dollars through the Channel Islands over the past three months, hinting he may flee Zimbabwe if he loses next weekend's presidential elections. Most of the more than $27 million that Mr Mugabe has moved through financial institutions without their knowledge has ended up in Malaysia, according to the Sunday Telegraph.
It was a net exporter of grain, gold, chromium, citrus, tea, coffee and meat. Whites and blacks in the capital city of Harare (the Salisbury of my youth) talked happily of its future.
Unfortunately, people who were not affected turned a blind eye to the warning signs that Mugabe was bent on dictatorship at any price to anyone. The principal daily newspapers came under government control. And Mugabe dispatched his North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade to practice genocide in Matabeleland against the minority there, who had been traditional enemies of his Shona majority.
Still, to many, Mugabe was the West's best hope of a new kind of African leader. The West hoped mightily, and Zimbabwe's tiny white minority also hoped.
The commercial farmers, nearly all white, hoped too, and hid their fears in the love of the land.
In Zimbabwe, the sun shines as steadily and benignly as it does in San Diego, and it is easy to count your blessings and hard to innumerate your fears. So people ignored the growing megalomania of the president and his steady erosion of their civil liberties. People in Zimbabwe are always saying, "All will come right." It is a kind of national mantra.
All has now gone hideously, horrendously and, possibly irrevocably, wrong. [End Excerpt]
When they come beggin' for relief money for Zimbabwe, they ain't getting a dime from us. They caused their problems -- not just Mugabe, but the populace at large -- and they can starve with their problems.
Actually, some of us get incensed because this is plain old wrong, what the Hitler-emulating raving madman Mugabe has done to this country. He has encouraged his 'brownshirts' and the white farmer is his Jew.
Evil whites, of course.
Then they will come to America, tin cup in hand, asking for food.
They caused their own problems, and I refuse to feed a man a fish when he just cast down his fishing rod and nets in contempt.
He just insulted Blair and told him to get his pink nose out of their business, so I doubt the UK wants to help too much now.
Revelations that the election has fallen under the control of the military, just weeks after army chiefs threatened to stage a coup in the case of an opposition victory, will add to the pressure for the world to take a firm stand against Mr Mugabe.
With just four days to go before polling stations open, the growing evidence that the election is already deeply flawed will reinforce pressure by Britain and other Commonwealth countries to put pressure on Zimbabwe's neighbours to declare the results void if Mr Mugabe claims victory.
Almost every aspect of the vote, including the handling of ballot boxes, is in the hands of a retired army colonel, Sobusa Gula-Ndebele. Mr Mugabe quietly appointed him head of the Electoral Supervisory Commission a few days after the military high command made the coup threat.
Colonel Gula-Ndebele has in turn appointed Brigadier Douglas Nyikayaramba chief elections officer, the second most important post. The Government says Brigadier Nyikayaramba retired from the army a few weeks ago, but sources say he is merely on leave.
In recent weeks soldiers have been appointed to all levels of the election process.
The electoral commission has also recruited "war veterans", who have led the often violent invasions of farms and been instrumental in the campaign of terror against Mr Mugabe's opponents, and members of the feared Central Intelligence Organisation to work alongside the soldiers.
The military's infiltration of the electoral process means that soldiers, war veterans and ruling party officials responsible for a two-year government campaign of violence will be inside almost every polling station.
In some cases, they will be "helping" voters to mark their ballots.
At the heart of Mr Mugabe's strategy to cling to power is the perpetual violence begun by the war veterans who led the farm invasions and now extended to towns and villages by the ruling ZANU-PF's private militia, the National Youth Service Brigade.
In Mashonaland, where Mr Mugabe must do well to stand any hope of winning the election, villagers have been ordered to take advantage of a provision that allows an election official to help them vote if, for instance, they are illiterate. ZANU-PF militia members will be outside to deal with anyone who does not ask for help.
A human rights lawyer, Tawanda Hondora, said there was no doubt the attacks on the vote were co-ordinated towards one end: getting Mr Mugabe re-elected, however illegitimately. "Look at the high incidence of violence, look at the creation of the ZANU-PF youth militia and that the war veterans have not been arrested for violence.
"Look at the number of people who have been tortured, disappeared or whose homes have been destroyed. What else can you conclude?'' [End]
Now that it's such a disaster, they're beginning to go in to report on the gore.
At the end of the meeting of Commonwealth leaders, an apparent compromise was reached to avoid immediately suspending Zimbabwe from the organization and imposing punitive sanctions against Robert Mugabe, the country's President, for human rights abuses and alleged vote-rigging.
However, the common front fell apart almost immediately. "We have postponed the day of judgment on Zimbabwe and I think that is the wrong thing to do," said Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister. "We should have provided a far stronger statement and backed it up with action."[End Excerpt]
The elections are run by a commission whose members are appointed by Mugabe, and for this election the commission abandoned its old practice of drawing some of the officials from non-governmental organizations.
Over the last two years Mugabe has filled key positions in his administration with former army officers. The Electoral Supervisory Committee is chaired by Sobuza Gula-Nbebele, a lawyer and a retired colonel, and the chief electoral officer is a former brigadier.
Mugabe's camp claimed a major diplomatic victory Monday when the 54-member Commonwealth decided not to slap sanctions on him. African states blocked attempts by Britain, Australia and New Zealand to do so.[End Excerpt]
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