The High Court in Harare on Tuesday dismissed a finding by a Southern African Development Community (SADC) tribunal that President Robert Mugabe’s land reform programme was illegal.

The High Court in Harare said the regional tribunal’s ruling would have no effect in Zimbabwe because of the political upheaval reversing 10 years of land seizures would cause.

“We needed to get that High Court judgement to make the (tribunal’s) ruling enforceable,” said Mark Carrie-Wilson, lawyer for the Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers Union.

“It has now been dismissed, and it is likely to be dismissed by the Supreme Court as well.”

More than 4 000 white farming families and a million of their workers and their families have been driven off the land and out of their homes since Mugabe launched the confiscations, most of them opportunistic land-grabs by senior members of his Zanu-PF party.

According to the CFU, whose members had launched the court appeal to have the tribunals ruling enforced, about 300 white farmers are left in Zimbabwe – 152 of them have been charged with illegally occupying their own land.

A group of 79 of Zimbabwe’s white farmers appealed for help to the SADC tribunal, which citizens of member states can petition when all legal rights in their own country have been exhausted.

Like other signatories to the tribunal, Zimbabwe is expected to act in accordance with the principles of human rights, democracy and the rule of law, and to accept its jurisdiction.

Its judgement in December 2008 said that the land seizures were racist, violated Zimbabwe’s own constitution and constituted an act of theft of white farmers land. The tribunal ordered Mugabe’s regime to stop harassing farmers and allow them to farm.

Mugabe however immediately dismissed the ruling as an exercise in futility and white farm invasions have continued unabated since, despite the inauguration a year ago of a coalition government with Zimbabwe’s pro-democracy former opposition.

Keywords: African Development Bank, commercial, Constitution, farmers, farms, FOrt Hare, Harare, Joshua Teke Malinga, Kariba Draft, land, Leopold Takawira, Michael Peter Hitschmann, Mike Hitschmann, Morgan, Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement, Thabani