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.
Zimbabwe should not be an exception***In the face of a stubborn and credible opposition Mugabe cannot successfully employ the same tactics he has used in the past to destroy opposition parties. This one is synonymous with the people of Zimbabwe and is therefore indestructible. Fifteen years ago, when Mugabe was still considered a hero, he could have counted on many countries to voluntarily rally to his cause. Now he is reduced to blackmailing some African states into endorsing his neurotic leadership.
They do this to cover up their own shame and embarrassment because when your fellow black brother or sister behaves as abominably as Mugabe has done, the immediate reaction is to cover up in the face of fierce external condemnation. There is this strange perception in Africa that as soon as non-black people condemn a black leader's behaviour, there should be a show of solidarity by other blacks. How about universal principles that bind together our collective humanity regardless of colour? When a black leader bankrupts his country by pursuing foolish policies he/she must be condemned.***
They also expressed interest in venturing into business with local farming and manufacturing companies. Most of the Libyan companies which supply fuel to the country had threatened to discontinue the supplies following the failure the country to pay the debt because of foreign currency, shortages.
According to their agreement, if Zimbabwe does not pay in assets it must do so in foreign currency but this is not available. Efforts by Mugabe to settle the outstanding debt in exchange for beef were rejected by the Libyans who insisted on receiving land instead. ……….. As part of the barter deal between the two countries, the Libyans have also acquired the government's 70% stake in the Oil Blending Company of Zimbabwe. Initially, a French company, Oil Invest, which has a 30% stake in the blending company, was poised to take over the government's shares, but the deal was scuttled at the last minute when Libya expressed interest in the company.***
It is high time that Christians and congregations chase away pastors, reverends and priests who bless and speak well of the state-sponsored evil being encouraged by Zimbabwe's ruling class. Men of God who grace ZANU PF occasions for their own selfish ends should be chased away from the churches.
These are indeed abnormal times when so-called men of God turn out to be supporters of such devilish acts as being perpetrated by the state today. It is time that right-thinking Zimbabwean Christians say "to hell with these fake men of God who preach the word according to ZANU PF".***
(Under the Guise of Religion) ..United Methodists Working for Peace in Zimbabwe
………. Despite U.S. visa and entry sanctions against Mugabe and top government officials to protest the elections and human rights abuses, Mugabe traveled to New York with his wife Grace, Foreign Minister Stan Mudenge and Youth Minister Elliot Manyika, the Zimbabwe state media reported Thursday. Manyika heads a ruling party youth militia training program that independent human rights groups blame for assaults, rape and torture of opponents, including children and teen-agers. Schools in opposition strongholds have been shut down after teachers accused of supporting the opposition were assaulted in front of their classes, Tsvangirai said. U.S. officials have said Mugabe traveled to New York under U.N. immunity conditions similar to those used by Cuban leader Fidel Castro in recent decades.***
Mugabe has refused to consider new elections, and hopes for making headway in the talks were dim from the outset. Tsvangirai has also demanded an immediate end to state-orchestrated reprisals against his supporters and has ruled out mediators' calls for him to join a national unity government. Mugabe, 78, led Zimbabwe to independence in 1980 and has vowed to crush any protests against his victory. He ruled virtually unchallenged until the economy collapsed and political violence erupted two years ago.***
The EU cut off 128 million euros (dlrs 110 million) in development aid, banned all travel to the EU for Mugabe and 20 of his Cabinet ministers and froze their assets in Europe. Amos said Tuesday the government accepted that there was little it could do unilaterally against Zimbabwe, as any action risked playing into Mugabe's hands. She said Mugabe's propanda had portrayed Britain as meddling in the affairs of its former colony. "We are supporting our partners in Africa because we feel very clearly that it is Robert Mugabe's peers in Africa to whom he might listen. I think if there is a solution, it has to come from within the leadership within Africa," she said.***
But there is a difference between long-term development aid and humanitarian emergency relief. When innocent people are perishing of hunger, their governments' shortcomings should not be used as a pretext to deny assistance. After a number of private aid organizations conferred recently in Washington, they left the meeting with the impression that the Bush administration is "intent on engaging quickly and robustly," as one participant put it.***
"I'm not sure where the minister has been these last two years, because he has already listed 95 percent of Zimbabwe's farms for government takeover," Buckle explained. "There are now only 308 farms in the entire country not listed for state seizure. Neither Dr. Made nor any of his officials are prepared to offer any written guarantees to a farmer that he will be able to grow, reap and sell his wheat before the government moves in and takes the farm over. The 6 million starving Zimbabweans have Dr. Made and his government to thank for their plight. We have become like Somalia and Ethiopia and are holding out our begging bowls to the world. A world that would rather feed us than help us to get a democratic government who care for their people."
So who has taken control of Zimbabwe's formerly white-owned farms, one might wonder.
"Last week, the government in Zimbabwe announced that settlers and squatters were being evicted from commercial farms in our nation. All week we have been waiting with bated breath to hear from the Commercial Farmers Union that this is in fact the case and that commercial farmers have begun picking up their lives and getting some food into the ground. From all reports, though, it appears that this is not what is happening. Squatters and settlers are being moved off some farms - those that have been given to Zimbabwe's VIPs," Buckle said.
"Lists of the new owners of Zimbabwe's prime and previously most productive commercial farms have now been made public. The list runs at the moment to 187 names, and it is shocking. … The new owners of Zimbabwe's commercial farms are not farmers at all. They are not graduates from our agricultural schools and colleges. They are not young men and women who are ready to toil under the baking African sun tending crops and livestock." Buckle said that the new owners of Zimbabwe's farms include government ministers, members of Parliament, police officials, military brass and judicial officers. Members of the media friendly to Mugabe have also collected prime property.........
Many South Africans fear that Zimbabwe-style farm invasions are just around the corner. Since 1994, over 1,200 white South African farmers out of a total of 40,000 have been murdered, with another 6,000 attacks reported........
"The SAPS, SANDF (the new South African National Defense Force) researchers and several commissions are adamant that farm attacks are simply acts of crime. Will future presidents release these 'criminals' due to their contribution to the 'extended struggle'? Has membership of the ANC Youth League become the latest qualification required for amnesty, or should farmers read more into it?"
Continued the spokesman, "If this is the case, the 'Mugabe signals' in Zimbabwe are clearly recognizable as party members receive the benefits, whilst opposition members are held in modern maximum-security prisons and those outside intimidated and murdered. The president owes the farmers of South Africa an explanation regarding the implications of his decision, namely, are the attacks on farmers politically inspired? Are farms - and therefore farmers, their families and workers - targets of the 'extended struggle'? And finally, are farm attackers classified as freedom fighters?" "President Mbeki is leaving his flanks open to a 'Mugabe label,'" the spokesman concluded.****
“We did everything they wanted,” he said. “We won the election for them, but they have treated us no better than donkeys. They have used us and thrown us away.”
.... “I don’t want to do those things any more,” said Sam. “My parents are so unhappy.” David added: “We’re in a jail of our own – never free to leave and always being punished for what we do. We’ll never have our lives back until Mugabe is gone.” ***
That crisis was even more dire: about 19 million people needed emergency food, and livestock starved to death across the region because of lack of water and pasture. South Africa, which has been spared the current troubles, was also hit hard. International aid poured in and disaster was averted.
But over the last two years, severe drought, in between bouts of flooding, has battered the region once again. This time, the problem is complicated by the high incidence of H.I.V. infection along with the political turmoil in Zimbabwe and mismanagement Malawi.
The countries of southern Africa have the world's highest rates of H.I.V. infection, leaving millions of people vulnerable to the ravages of hunger
The sale of Malawi's entire backup supply of grain and the past year's political upheaval in Zimbabwe have exacerbated the effects of the natural disaster.
Until recently, Zimbabwe was one of the region's more stable and self-sufficient countries, and neighbors often turned to it for help during food shortages. But the government's efforts to seize land from white farmers, who own more than half the country's fertile land, have disrupted production greatly. The combination of severe drought and farm seizures has been disastrous.
Production of the corn crop in Zimbabwe plunged by nearly 70 percent this year, leaving almost half the population in need of emergency food. With triple-digit inflation, a limp currency and rising unemployment, Zimbabwe can barely help itself, let alone its neighbors.
Meanwhile, officials in Malawi have been assailed by Western diplomats, international donors and civic groups for selling off the country's 167,000-ton emergency grain reserve and failing to account for the proceeds. President Bakili Muluzi denies accusations of corruption. He says his officials were told by the International Monetary Fund to sell the grain to repay debt, a charge that fund officials deny.
But Mr. Muluzi acknowledges that he cannot explain why his officials sold off the entire reserve, when they could have sold part, given that 30 percent of the population may go hungry and there is nothing left.
"This is the question I was asking," President Muluzi said in an interview. "I didn't understand the intelligence about that." The debate is meaningless in the villages, where men and women are too busy scrabbling for food to weigh multiple causes of calamity.***
To compound the misery of Zimbabweans, the country's minister of agriculture and other associates of Mugabe refused until April to agree that the country would run out of staple food. Opposition politicians had predicted disaster last September. But for purposes of propaganda before the presidential election in March, his government denied the possibility of shortfalls. Even after belatedly acknowledging the country's precarious food situation in April, the government has harassed external relief efforts and has succeeded in denying food relief to areas that voted against Mugabe in March. ***
In the language of tin-pot dictatorships, "reform" means "theft." For years, Mugabe has allowed armed gangs to occupy white-owned farms, sometimes murdering the owners, as a precursor to a plan to seize the farms, allegedly for redistribution to poor blacks. (In reality, the farms are going to Mugabe's cronies.) The result? People are starving in Zimbabwe, not because there is a drought, but because hundreds of thousands of acres of crops have not been planted. Some farms are fallow because they are occupied by armed thugs. Others are unused because of a law threatening white farmers with two years in prison if they plant without government permission, which has not been given. Other farms are unplanted simply because no one in his right mind would go to the trouble of planting crops that will be seized before he can harvest them. When you make war on the farmers, what can you expect but famine?***
In a show of force unprecedented since Mugabe and his ruling ZANU PF party wrested power from British colonialists 22 years ago, armed police have in the past few weeks swooped on the opposition, arresting nearly 100 MDC activists. The law enforcement agency has also broken up social gatherings and university student meetings, arguing that they could be used to mobilise support for the proposed strike. The government has also intensified a crackdown on the country's independent media by arresting and sending several journalists to the courts for alleged contravention of sections of a tough media law passed earlier this year.
Sithole said by publicly wielding the iron fist, the government was sending a clear message to ordinary Zimbabweans on the cost of joining any protest against it. UZ Institute of Development Studies associate professor Brian Raftopoulos said the government's high-handed approach was an admission it did not have any solution to the deepening political, economic and food crisis. Nearly half of Zimbabwe's 12 million people face starvation because of poor rains last season but largely because ZANU PF supporters disrupted agricultural production when they seized land from large- scale producing white farmers.***
"We dismiss the claim that the government is destroying the backbone of the country's agriculture-based economy by resettling landless people," Agriculture Minister Joseph Made told The Herald. The World Food Program estimates that nearly half of the 12.5 million Zimbabweans were at risk of starvation in the coming year and a U.N. relief team arrived Wednesday on an assessment tour.
Despite promises to redistribute the confiscated land to poorer segments of the population, many of the farms have been given to confidantes of Mugabe and ruling party leaders. The party leaders also accused white farmers of trying to take over the country, saying they were taking "a racist and fascist approach of wanting to continue white dominance in this country," Made said.***
But a useful guide to the prospects of NEPAD is the previous conduct of its architects. Representing Africa in Kananaskis were Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, the continent's heavyweights. These men were also two-thirds of the Commonwealth troika on Zimbabwe. When Robert Mugabe stole the election earlier this year, Messrs Obasanjo and Mbeki flew to Harare for a "working lunch" with the old mass murderer. Their suggestion was that he form a coalition government including members of the party he'd stolen the election from. Mr. Mugabe laughed so hard his Chinese- made rubber penis fell off. To be honest, Mr. Mbeki's heart wasn't really in this "compromise" proposal: Indeed, after Mr. Mugabe's cheerfully straightforward fraud, intimidation and violence paid off on election day, Mr. Mbeki's government had sent him a congratulatory telegram.***
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