While Zimbabwe’s white farmers waited nervously last week to be thrown off their land, an unexpected court ruling appeared to save many of them by invalidating hundreds of eviction orders.
But like so many other court rulings, this one was completely ignored by President Robert Mugabe’s government, and top Cabinet ministers have continued to demand farmers immediately leave their land.
”It isn’t surprising,” said Jenni Williams, representative for the white farmers group Justice for Agriculture. ”In the past, (officials) have just paid lip service to the laws, and on the ground it has absolutely made no difference.”
Since political violence mainly blamed on government supporters began in 2000, Zimbabwe’s once respected judiciary has been utterly marginalised.
The government has ignored a raft of rulings it dislikes and pressured judges it considers critical of its policies to resign. Most other judges have stopped ruling against the government, local legal observers said.
”The independence of the judiciary is gone,” said Lovemore Madhuku, head of the National Constitutional Assembly, which is fighting for constitutional reform in Zimbabwe. ”I think some judges genuinely fear for their lives.”
In the past few months, a court decision throwing out new election laws was brushed aside, a foreign journalist was ordered deported minutes after being acquitted of violating media laws and the justice minister simply ignored his three-month jail sentence for contempt of court.
Efforts to suppress the judiciary began more than two years ago, when the government outlined its plans for seizing white-owned farms for redistribution to landless blacks and sanctioned ruling party militants’ often violent occupation of many of those farms.
The courts repeatedly ordered the government to remove the militants from the farms and restore law and order. The government refused, saying land redistribution was a political, not legal, issue.
”The courts can do what they want. They are not courts for our people and we shall not even be defending ourselves in these courts,” Mugabe said at the time.
In November 2000, the Supreme Court ruled that the government’s land seizure plan was illegal and unconstitutional. Soon after, hundreds of thugs from Mugabe’s ruling party stormed the court, dancing behind the judges’ benches and chanting, ”Kill the judges.” Police stood by, and no one was arrested.
Chief Justice Anthony Gubbay was forced into early retirement last year after the government said it could not guarantee judges’ safety. Several other critical judges were also replaced with ruling party loyalists.
”Any judge who has been brave enough to take positions against government institutions has been harassed and intimidated into resigning,” said Ashwin Trikamjee, a member of the International Bar Association’s human rights institute.
Now, on the rare occasions now when the courts rule against the government, it is usually in cases too obvious to have been decided any other way, many local lawyers said.
The government has ignored those rulings anyway.
In February, the Supreme Court overturned new election laws the opposition said disenfranchised their supporters and made vote rigging easier.
The government called the ruling ”a rotten fish,” and days later, Mugabe reinstated the laws with a presidential decree. Under those laws, he was declared the victor in March elections that many international observers condemned as intentionally biased to ensure his victory.
Despite the obstacles, Justice for Agriculture says it has no choice but to contest the evictions in Zimbabwe’s courts.
”We can only have the moral high ground if we continue to do the usual when faced with the insane or unusual,” Williams said. – Sapa-AP