Regional leaders have not acted on Mugabe violation of farm ruling

Registrar Charles Mkandawire told The Zimbabwean on Sunday that the Tribunal submitted a report on the violations by Harare to a summit of SADC heads of government and state last year as required by laws governing the regional court.
To date there has been no response from the SADC leaders, who have firmly stood by Mugabe despite his controversial policies that have ruined once prosperous Zimbabwe and tainted the region as investment destination.
The tribunal issued an interim relief to white Zimbabwean farmers after they had appealed to the court in 2007 but this order was violated by the Zimbabwean government, Mkandawire said by phone from Namibia, where the Tribunal is based.
After we made our findings (on violations) …. we then referred the matter to the full extraordinary SADC summit held in August last year in South Africa as required by Article 32 but we still await a determination, he said.
It was not possible to get an immediate comment on the matter from the office of SADC chairman and President of South Africa Kgalema Motlanthe. 
The Tribunal last March issued an interim order barring the Harare administration from seizing land belonging to 78 white farmers pending the hearing of an application by the farmers challenging the legality of the government programme to confiscate white-owned farmland for redistribution to landless blacks.
However, some of the farmers were either forcibly evicted from their properties or assaulted by supporters and members of Mugabe's ruling ZANU PF party in violation of the interim order.
The Zimbabwean government has also disregarded a final order by the Tribunal last November declaring farm seizures racist and illegal under the SADC Treaty and ordering Harare not to evict the white farmers and to pay full compensation for land it had already seized from some of the farmers.
Zimbabwe's Deputy Chief Justice, Luke Malaba, publicly criticised the Tribunal ruling in a speech two weeks, saying the regional court lacked jurisdiction to hear the application by white farmers while several government officials have said the government will not be bound by the court's ruling.

But Mkandawire said the Tribunal could only act on any alleged violation of the final order upon receiving a formal complaint from the affected parties.
Under the regional protocol, the Tribune can only refer member-states that violate its rulings to the mother body which will determine what action to take, according to Mkandawire.
But SADC leaders, some of who won power with help from Mugabe, do not seem to have the stomach for confrontation with the veteran Zimbabwean leader.
Regional leaders have failed to openly criticise human rights abuses by Mugabe's government or to pressure the veteran leader to share power equitably with opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai in a government of national unity to tackle Zimbabwe's economic and humanitarian crisis.     
Out of about 4500 white commercial farmers in Zimbabwe in 2000, only about 300 remain on farms after Mugabe evicted the rest and parcelled out their land to blacks, most of them supporters of his ZANU PF party and government.

Mugabe has defended the chaotic and often violent farm seizures as necessary to correct a colonial land tenure system that reserved most of the best arable land for whites while blacks were banished to arid and poor lands.

But critics say Mugabe's cronies – and not ordinary peasants  — benefited the most from farm seizures with some of them ending up with as many as six farms each against the government's stated one-man-one-farm policy.

In addition, critics blame farm seizures for plunging Zimbabwe into severe food shortages after the government failed to support black peasants resettled on former white farms with inputs, skills training and funds to maintain production.