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.
Outside the southern African state's parliament, there was no sign of a planned protest march by pro-democracy activists after police warnings that the demonstration would be crushed. Mugabe said Zimbabwe, in the grips of its worst economic and political crisis since independence from Britain in 1980, was facing "considerable challenges" from what he called "British machinations" and a regional drought.
The economy is in its fourth year of recession with record high inflation and unemployment and a severe food shortage. "Our sovereignty is constantly under attack from the bullying states ... which seek to use their political and economic prowess to achieve global hegemony," Mugabe said. At 78, Mugabe is a left-winger who counts Cuba's Fidel Castro and Libya's Muammar Gaddafi among his foreign allies. Monday, the European Union extended a blacklist of Zimbabwean officials subjected to a visa ban and asset freeze. The move is aimed at piling more pressure on the country whose human rights record it says has deteriorated since Mugabe's re-election in March. ***
Among them are frail and elderly men and women, retired after a lifetime's work, and children whose worlds have been turned upside-down, hanging around in the sun with no prospect of an education. I saw about 100 such people. A 45- year-old foreman had been forced to leave behind the beef herd he had worked with for 15 years. He was a skilled stockman of the sort highly valued in any agricultural economy. He is unlikely ever to tend cattle again. A 54-year- old farmhand, whose father and grandfather had worked on the farm before him, had lost the only home and working environment he had ever known - and Zimbabwe had lost another skilled hand. An 80-year-old wizened and lame retired worker, expecting to live out his declining years in relative tranquillity, was stumbling around the tents and the open fires, lost. A mother pointed to her ten-year-old child and said, "No school now. No more school ever."
From what I heard she is probably right. The numbers are rocketing. If the land grabs continue and the 2,900 white farmers are required to leave their farms on 9 August, the number of 'displaced' black farm workers could rise to 300,000. Robert Mugabe couldn't care less. His government sneeringly describes the victims as Malawian or Mozambican, ignoring the reality that they have been in Zimbabwe for generations. My colleague Richard Spring, MP, and I arrived at an almost empty Harare airport at about 9 a.m. Because the Zimbabwean authorities did not know we were there, we were able to see troubling sights. A whistle-stop tour of the farmlands north-west of Harare showed us that hectare after hectare of highly productive farmland is lying unprepared, unplanted and vandalised. The sheer evil of this deliberate waste, at a time when six million Zimbabweans are malnourished and the threat of famine is just around the corner, was made starker by the evident success of the few farms still in production.***
During the election, Mugabe's militia – bolstered by 20,000 new recruits based at 23 posts in Mugabe's tribal homeland of Mashonaland – spread out around the nation and prevented at least 500,000 registered MDC voters from turning in their ballots, about 15 percent of all registered voters. The militia set up roadblocks all across the nation and would allow only passengers with ZANU-PF membership cards access to voting stations. On one Zimbabwean farm, where a poster of Mugabe was ruined with graffiti, the militia reportedly threatened to send the black workers on the farm to one of Mugabe's "re-education camps."
Philip Chiyangawa, a ZANU-PF member of parliament was captured on videotape telling one Mugabe youth militia member to "get a hold of MDC supporters; beat them until they are dead. Burn their farms and their workers' houses, then run away and we will blame the burning of the workers' houses on the whites. Report to the police, because they are ours." ***
There appears to be much hand wringing in the West about what to do. Food aid has been increased but that will deal with the symptoms, not the cause, of famine. Pleas have been made to Zimbabwe's neighbours to act but few African states have the political will to deal with the crisis. Mugabe has shown in recent weeks that he is quite prepared to divide the African Union and the Commonwealth to remain in power. The regime has not hesitated to play the racial card both domestically and internationally and the crisis is constantly portrayed as a spat between Britain and her former colony. Mugabe's purpose is to raise the stakes in the hope of deterring the West from taking sterner measures for fear of, for example, splitting the Commonwealth.
The crisis is now so grave, however, that the West must not be deterred from taking decisive action. Two distinct courses of action should be followed. First, those in Zimbabwe guilty of torture (as defined by the International Convention) should be investigated and prosecuted. Aside from the abuses of the past two years, food is now being used as a political weapon which is already resulting in thousands suffering. Many could die unless those responsible know that they will be held accountable for their actions. The vast majority of those who may die will be MDC supporters denied food solely because of their political beliefs. That is clearly a crime against humanity. Second, the West, in conjunction with its democratic African allies, must now seriously consider its responsibility to protect Zimbabweans. The report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty published in December 2001 points out that where a population is suffering serious harm as a result of repression or state failure, and the state in question is unwilling to halt the suffering, the usual principle of non-intervention yields to the international responsibility to protect.
The principle of state sovereignty, so readily used by the Mugabe regime to protect itself, is not absolute. With sovereignty comes a responsibility for the state to protect its people. But more than six million Zimbabweans face starvation as a direct result of the state's failure and its use of food aid as a political weapon. In these circumstances the civilised world has a responsibility to protect the Zimbabwean people and to do so it should intervene in the manner proposed by the International Commission. If future famines are to be avoided and if what was once the jewel of Africa is not to become another Somalia, governments in the West must must act urgently with their African colleagues to address the root cause of the catastrophe now unfolding in Zimbabwe.***
Several senior government officials have warned white farmers they face arrest and possible imprisonment of up to two years if they continue to defy eviction orders. Mugabe did not directly refer to the eviction deadline. But in his fiery speech railing against colonialism and Britain, Mugabe strongly criticized white farmers opposing the government's policies. "No farmer to our knowledge has been rendered landless. Only the greedy are complaining," he said.***
The production of corn, the country's staple food, plunged by nearly 70 percent this year, the United Nations says. The production of winter wheat, which is harvested in October, will be down by as much as 40 percent. Nearly half of Zimbabwe's population is in need of emergency food aid. Morgan Tsvangirai, who heads the country's leading opposition party, accused the government of destroying what was once one of Africa's most promising and prosperous nations.***
More than 100 families live and work on the farm where his plot is located. And there are other complications. Raymond says that though he has been promised seed and fertilizer from the government, he realizes the government has no money for such things. Seed for corn, he also says, is hard to come by because the government has taken all the seed-corn farms. But seed corn once grew on the plot where he's now building his house.
Raymond is a bit sheepish about settling on land that once belonged to someone else. He pulls a pink newspaper from his belongings and opens it to an article about white farmers being evicted from their land. "So sad," he says, displaying the article. "So sad." While the white farmers will lose their land and the decades of hard work they put into it, few will go away destitute. Most will drive away with a little savings and their personal belongings. It is the estimated one million black farm workers who stand to lose the most in the country's land reform. Most have nowhere to go. Desperate, many are refusing to allow their employers to leave until they pay compensation.
Last week, SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande said that there is a possibility that the SACP will take over the ANC "from within," and that the "working class must dominate ANC policy." "The African nationalism of the ANC has always been revolutionary, but it doesn't mean you don't find backwards elements," Nzimande said. He also believes that a coming crisis in the capitalist West will provide an opportunity to further the communist cause.
"A new type of global robber baron is emerging - look at what has been happening with all these companies in the United States," Nzimande told the South African media. "For us [the SACP] this is not a deviation - it's inherent in the system," he said. "The relevance of communist parties worldwide is that they represent an alternative society, an alternative to capitalism. When the Soviet Union collapsed there was a neo-liberal triumphalism that said: it's the end of history, there is one route for countries to develop. But poverty is widening. At our congress we are going to reflect on how we link up with this mass creative expression of anti-capitalist sentiment."***
The excellent infrastructure inherited by Robert Mugabe when he took over Zimbabwe in 1980 would have been adequate to overcome the current shortages. But at this point the policies he is pursuing can only be described as paranoid, while holding on to power seems to be his sole concern. His regime has now issued an ultimatum ordering all white farmers to vacate their property. The goal is not the implementation of equitable land reform, but the wanton destruction of property belonging to whites.
Africa's richest country has been destroyed by the irrational behavior of the president and the inadequate international response. This judgment applies, however, not only to the wealthy north, but also to Zimbabwe's neighbors in Africa itself. Not five weeks have passed since the founding of the African Union, which announced to great fanfare the goal of finally leading the continent to better times. Yet none of the AU members have acted to put a stop to Mugabe's disastrous policies. And thus has the sin of an individual redounded to the shame of many and the detriment of all. ***
"At home, the land redistribution programme which is empowering the hitherto marginalized black majority is being finalized," Mugabe said. "The program giving real ownership of land to indigenous Zimbabweans has also benefited officers of the defense forces and will continue to benefit more," he said.
The softer tone contrasted with his fiery speech Monday, when Mugabe said he would stick to an August deadline for giving white lands to blacks. "We shall keep a watchful eye on what is happening on the farms," he said, warning whites not to seek "another war."***
"In all our consultations with the international community and our colleagues on the continent, the question always comes up - 'What can be done more than what is being done now?' " Pahad admitted the only idea Pretoria could come up with was to continue to join its Commonwealth partner Nigeria in pressing for a resumption of the stalled talks between President Robert Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.***
Mugabe is right that the land was expropriated unjustly when white colonialists took over the country in 1890. But Zimbabwe is no longer the sparsely populated land the whites conquered. And the farmers are responsible for Zimbabwe's strong agriculture performance. Until a few years ago Zimbabwe was able to feed its more than 12 million people and have enough food for export. Now, thanks to Mugabe's misrule, it cannot feed itself.
The best approach would be a phased transfer of land supported by foreign donations. That would not serve Mugabe's political purposes, however. Land is used as a reward for Mugabe's supporters, and the confiscations recall his struggle to wrest the country, once known as Rhodesia, from whites. Following a tainted presidential election in March, the United States and the European Union imposed travel sanctions against leading officials. These have little impact, and it would be wrong to impose harsh measures that might harm ordinary Zimbabweans.
South Africa, which borders Zimbabwe, has tried to restrain Mugabe but in an understated way. Thabo Mbeki, the South African president, is trying to create a coalition of African leaders committed to democracy. Mugabe's misrule mocks their efforts. Public pressure ought to replace quiet diplomacy.[End] Mugabe's famine - state-sponsored destruction of commercial agriculture ***Many Zimbabweans were hoping for a sign from Mr Mugabe that he would slow or halt the state-sponsored destruction of commercial agriculture. But they were disappointed. "We brook no impediment," he said in his speech, "and we will certainly suffer no avoidable delays." He accused his opponents of being "rapacious supremacists", and suggested that they should go back to Britain, the former colonial power. ***
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