Posted by Zimbabwe will continue to expropriate the remaining white-run farms despite last week’s regional tribunal ruling that its land reforms program violated a southern African treaty, a state-owned newspaper reported here Monday.
In what could prove to be an acid test of effectiveness of regional institutions in the Southern African Development Community (SADC), Zimbabwe’s minister of land reform and resettlement, Didymus Mutasa, said Harare was not bound by the verdict of the SADC Tribunal and would go ahead with the acquisition of more farms as if nothing had happened.
Sitting in the Nambian capital of Windhoek, the SADC Tribunal last Friday ruled in favor of 78 white Zimbabwean farmers who had taken President Robert Mugabe’s government to court over what they saw as the discriminatory policy of acquiring farms they used to run from them for resettlement of landless blacks.
The tribunal ordered Zimbabwe not to interfere with operations on the farmers’ properties, saying the land reform program violated a 1992 treaty binding the 14-member SADC grouping with regards to discrimination on the basis of one’s race.
“They (the tribunal) are day-dreaming because we are not going to reverse the land reform exercise,” Mutasa told the state-run Herald newspaper.
He said the Zimbabwe government would accelerate the land reform program and would acquire the remaining white-run farms for the benefit of those left out of the program since 2000.
Source African Press Agency
