The case is widely seen as a landmark case for South Africans with business interests in crisis-torn Zimbabwe. Von Abo has been at pains for more than six years to get the South African government to act against the Zimbabwean government’s confiscation of land owned by South African citizens. He wants the Constitutional Court to confirm a high court order that the President acted unconstitutionally after he failed to provide him with diplomatic protection after his farms were seized in Zimbabwe.
Farms and huge tracts of lands were the spoils of Zimbabwe’s forced land invasion and von Abo, a South African who had a livelihood in Zimbabwe, was one of the victims.
Land reform in Zimbabwe began after the signing of the Lancaster House Agreement in 1979 in an effort to more equitably distribute land between the historically disenfranchised blacks and the minority whites who ruled Zimbabwe from 1923 to 1979.
The government’s land distribution is perhaps the most crucial and the most bitterly contested political issue today. Von Abo’s pleas for diplomatic protection were ignored and 14 of his farms were seized, crippling a multimillion rand farming business.
Over a decade ago, Zimbabwe implemented a new land policy for farms to be expropriated. In July this year, von Abo took his fight to Pretoria High Court, which ruled in his favour. He hoped the highest court in the land would follow suite.
Government has refused to respond and the case has been postponed to February 28, 2009. – South African Broadcasting Corporation.