SOUTHERN African leaders have suspended a regional court which ruled against Zimbabwe’s land reform programme for at least six months while a review is carried out into its “role functions and terms of reference”.
The Southern African Development Community [SADC] Tribunal ruled in 2008 that 78 white farmers could keep their land, saying their farms had been targeted for compulsory seizure to resettle landless blacks “primarily on considerations of race”.
Zimbabwe has refused to respect the ruling even though the country signed the treaty creating the court.
A communiqué issued at the end of a two-day summit of SADC leaders said: “The summit decided that a review of the role functions and terms of reference of the SADC Tribunal should be undertaken and concluded within six months.”
Joao Samuel Caholo, the deputy executive secretary of the 15-member bloc said that means the Tribunal would not be able to conclude any old cases or take on new ones before the end of the review to be carried out by SADC Justice Ministers.
Zimbabwe insists that the treaty establishing the tribunal — which was ratified by only five countries — is a legal nullity, but critics contend that signing it was enough.
Zimbabwe’s Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa has warned that if the Tribunal’s ruling in favour of white farmers is upheld, it would mean returning farms to about 4,000 white farmers who lost their land in an often violent and politically charged campaign launched by President Robert Mugabe in 2000.
Zimbabwe later passed a constitutional amendment in 2005 which stated that “all agricultural land … is acquired by and vested in the State with full title therein …; and … no compensation shall be payable for (agricultural) land … except for any improvements effected on such land before it was acquired.”
When the farmers brought a constitutional challenge to the Supreme Court, they lost their case before taking the matter to the Tribunal.
Chinamasa says Zimbabwe never intended the Tribunal to overrule its top court.
“At the moment the Tribunal is trying to reverse the decisions of our Supreme Courts, in fact it’s purporting to rewrite our constitutions,” Chinamasa said. “As you know our land reform is constitutional, and our courts have adjudicated over the matter and given the ruling that the land reform is legal, it’s constitutional.”
He said the Tribunal was hurriedly constituted, “and almost immediately there were cases against Zimbabwe … to reverse the land reform programme.”
He added: “Happily, it has not succeeded and will not succeed.”