SOUTHERN AFRICAN COMMERCIAL FARMERS ALLIANCE RESPONSE TO PRESIDENT MUGABE

However, there is no difference in the validity of the property rights to these two pieces of land whose title has been sanctified and those of thousands of others which were seized by government without any purchase agreements or payment. The sanctity of rights to these thousands of properties was not in any way upheld.

In reply to a question from Mr. Trevor Gifford of the Commercial Farmers Union the President is reported to have said: We did pay compensation for improvements and developments. We have honoured that part. This statement is factually incorrect. Whilst there have been lists of some of the expropriated properties published in the Chronicle and Herald newspapers with instructions to the owners to present themselves in Harare to collect compensation, the amounts offered, even in respect of improvements only, have been derisory. The requirements of the Land Acquisition Act in respect of compensation have not been followed.

Numerous examples can be quoted, but in a typical instance in Matabeleland North, the offer made in respect of a nineteen thousand acre cattle ranch was only sufficient to buy a very second hand pick up LDV. This pitiful offer was made in spite of the farm being well developed with boreholes, paddocks, handling facilities, a homestead and other buildings. It is true that in a very small number of cases desperate and destitute farm owners have surrendered their title in order to take the pittance offered. This amounts to extortion as was the view upheld in respect of properties taken in similar fashion during the Second World War.

He was also reported to have said: The responsibility for compensating the farmers rests on the shoulders of the British government and its allies. The SADC Tribunal which is tasked with ensuring that member states who have signed up to the Treaty adhere to their Treaty obligations believes otherwise.

In their Judgement of 28 November 2008 the Tribunal says: It is difficult for us to understand the rationale behind excluding compensation for such land, given the clear legal position in international law. It is the right of the Applicants under international law to be paid, and the correlative duty of the Respondent to pay, fair compensation. Moreover, the Respondent cannot rely on its national law, its Constitution, to avoid an international law obligation to pay compensation as we have already indicated above.

We are told that the SADC Treaty and consequently the rulings of its Tribunal are not binding as the Treaty was never ratified by Parliament. This is not the view of Deputy Attorney General, Advocate Prince Machaya who is repeatedly tasked with defending the government in the Tribunal. He said before that Court on 28 May 2008: Ive also drawn it to the attention of the Minister of Justice and the Minister responsible for Lands that there is a need to comply fully with the order of the Tribunal and the last I heard when I had the audience of our Minister of Justice on Thursday last week was that he was going to table the matter with our Cabinet at its meeting on yesterdays date and he was going to confirm with me over the telephone on the issue of the required compliance with the order. Our Minister of Justice concurred in my discussion with him that Respondent (government) had an obligation at the international level with the orders of this Tribunal and that he was going to inform his Cabinet colleagues accordingly.

We have legal opinion that the SADC Treaty has been properly entered into in terms of the laws of Zimbabwe and thus its provisions bind the government. This legal opinion is ably supported by the way in which the government vigorously defends any actions brought against it in the Tribunal, and even on occasion shows the gravity of their commitment to the Tribunal by requiring the Zimbabwe Ambassador to Namibia to sit with the governments legal Counsel in the Tribunal itself. Moreover we note that none other than the President himself studiously attends at the SADC Summit. The inescapable conclusion is that our legal opinion is correct. Zimbabwe is a fully fledged member of SADC and is bound by the obligations imposed by the Treaty entered into, signed and concluded by the President himself on 17 August 1992 in Windhoek. The Treaty was ratified by Parliament on 17 November 1992.

The President is also quoted as having said: I told Blair to keep his money and we are going to keep our land. The British have taken his advice we have already enquired of them when we may call and collect our compensation cheques. They laughed at us.