JOHANNESBURG - Three Zimbabwe farm owners who have been violently ousted from their farms are seeking to enforce their rights in terms of SA Development Community (SADC) Tribunal rulings through a South African court.

Civil rights movement AfriForum assisted South African Louis Fick, who previously farmed in Zimbabwe, and Zimbabwean commercial farmers Richard Etheredge and William Campbell to bring an urgent application before the North Gauteng High Court yesterday. The application will continue today.

The farmers approached the court for permission to serve papers in their main application on the offices of the Zimbabwean Attorney-General and Justice Minister in Harare.

This will allow them to cite the Zimbabwe government as a party to their application to register two SADC Tribunal rulings and a costs order in favour of Zimbabwe’s besieged farmers in the High Court of South Africa for purposes of enforcement in this country.

The tribunal held that the Zimbabwe government’s land seizure programme constituted unlawful and unjustifiable racial discrimination, infringed the right of access to courts and amounted to arbitrary expropriation without compensation.

It ordered that compensation had to be paid to farmers whose farms had already been expropriated and that the rights of remaining farmers had to be protected.

When the Zimbabwean government, instead of taking measures to protect the farmers, continued to persecute and prosecute them, the tribunal made a second ruling against them and also made a costs order in favour of the farmers.

Fick said in court papers he and several hundred remaining commercial farmers, together with thousands of their employees and their families, remained subject to the continuation of the very pattern of conduct which the tribunal held to be in breach of the SADC Treaty.

“Since the awards, the reign of terror against the commercial farmers… had in fact reached a new crescendo.” Fick stressed that he and others, whose rights were in daily serious jeopardy in Zimbabwe, urgently needed to recover the costs awarded by the tribunal by seeking to attach assets from the Zimbabwe government present in South Africa.

Substantial claims for compensation also arose from the tribunal awards, which were currently being finalised and would be lodged with the tribunal for further award against the Zimbabwe government as soon as possible, he added.

The Citizen