Judgment will be delivered this week in the High Court in Pretoria in an application by three Zimbabwean farmers for a punitive cost order against the Zimbabwe government. Disowned farmers Louis Fick, Richard Etheredge and Michael Campbell applied for an urgent costs order after the Zimbabwean government mistakenly took them to court to stop their state-owned properties in Cape Town and Johannesburg from being sold on auction.

The farmers are being assisted by civil rights organisation AfriForum. The Zimbabwean government enrolled its urgent application against the farmers in the High Court in Pretoria on two separate occasions. It however removed the application after realising that German bank KfW Bankengruppe, and not the farmers, had arranged for the sale of the properties. Its application against KfW was postponed in the High Court in Johannesburg until September 7 after the bank undertook not to go ahead with two planned auctions to sell the Zimbabwe government-owned properties.

The government maintains the properties are protected by diplomatic immunity and that the writs should never have been granted. The bank and the farmers obtained separate writs in execution against the properties. The bank obtained its writ after the Zimbabwe Iron and Steel Company defaulted on payments of a multi-million-dollar loan. The farmers scored a court victory after the High Court in Pretoria registered a ruling of a Southern African Development Community Tribunal that Zimbabwe's land reform programme was racist and unlawful. The registration of the SADC ruling opened the way for the farmers to attach Zimbabwean government-owned properties in South Africa to pay for cost orders granted in their favour.

All three farmers were violently expelled from their farms. Counsel for the farmers, Jeremy Gauntlett SC, on Tuesday argued that the Zimbabwe government had caused his clients unnecessary legal costs by issuing an application about the wrong writ in the wrong court involving the wrong party. "Now they're seeking to tuck it under their arm and simply walk away. Their unilateral withdrawal of the application from the urgent roll is unlawful," he said. Zimbabwe's government maintained the farmers had agreed the matter would be heard together with the application against the German bank next month, and that the matter of costs should therefore be determined by that court. Acting Judge Johan Kruger reserved judgment.

By SAPA