Farmers win Zimbabwe case

THE sale of a Zimbabwean government-owned property in Cape Town to settle a punitive legal costs order would go ahead, civil rights group AfriForum said yesterday.

“We will ask the sheriff in Cape Town this week to continue with arrangements for the judicial selling of the property in Salisbury Way in Kenilworth,” said AfriForum spokesman Willie Spies.

Yesterday the Supreme Court of Appeal dismissed an appeal by the Zimbabwean government against a high court ruling that made the sale of the house possible.

The high court ruling had enforced a Southern African Development Community (SADC) tribunal ruling.

“It will probably be the first time… that there will be a judicial selling of a state’s property owing to gross human rights violations,” said Spies.

The litigation began when Zimbabwean farmer Mike Campbell approached the SADC tribunal in Windhoek in 2008 after losing his land in Zimbabwe’s land reform process.

The tribunal of five judges from southern African states ruled in November 2008 that the land reform process was illegal and racist.

It held that Campbell and 77 other farmers should be left in peace and their property rights restored.

Continued legislation led to the registration of the tribunal’s finding in the high court in Pretoria in February 2010, and the attachment of a Zimbabwean government-owned property in Kenilworth, Cape Town.

AfriForum helped the group of Zimbabwean farmers to register the SADC tribunal’s finding in SA, which will now result in the selling of the Kenilworth property. – Sapa