Hundreds of families evicted last month from a farm outside the Zimbabwean capital, Harare, have been granted a reprieve.
High court Judge Rita Makarau ruled in favour of Percy Masendu and 429 other settlers who had filed an urgent court application to have their eviction nullified. The settlers occupied the land under the reform programme in 2000.
In a similar case, Justice Ben Hlatshwayo ruled in favour of 370 farmers facing eviction in Mashonaland West province.
Last month the government started evicting settlers from Little England farm. Their homes were razed and they were forced to camp along a highway. The official reason given was that the settlers were occupying land earmarked for large-scale farming.
Critics say the small-scale farmers are being moved out to make way for senior politicians and members of the military — a charge that is denied by the Zimbabwean government.
Judge Makarau ordered that the applicants, and all those claiming through them, be allowed to continue staying at Little England farm until such time as they are properly resettled or evicted by an order of a competent court.
Brian Zindi, one of those returning to the farm, said although they were excited by the court order, the evictions had traumatised them and depleted their resources.
”We now need to look for resources to build new houses, and that will be a very costly exercise. Out of desperation, we had sold some of our cattle, goats and sheep. Our children were preparing to write end-of-year course examinations, but what we now face is a small … crisis,” he said.
In Addis Ababa this week, the Zimbabwean government accused the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa of ”ambushing” it by releasing a report citing bad governance in the country. The report was released at the fourth African Development Forum of the Africa Union.
Zimbabwean Information Minister Jonathan Moyo criticised the UN for releasing the report before his delegation had been given the opportunity to read it. But the authors of the report insist that it was submitted to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs prior to the Addis Ababa meeting. In July the country used the same tactic to suppress an African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights report on abuses and human rights violations during the last two elections.
Meanwhile, Swaziland’s failure to resolve a ”rule of law” crisis has undermined economic growth over the past year, according to an annual report by the country’s Central Bank.
The report noted a downturn in gross domestic product (GDP) from 3,6% in 2002 to 2,5% in 2003. ”Given the estimated population growth rate of 2,9%, this implies a stagnation of the standard of living as measured by per capita income,” the bank said.
With two-thirds of its 1,9-million people living in poverty, the country’s sluggish performance comes as bleak news.
Virtually every sector showed signs of trouble, while government deficits rose and revenues plunged.
In carefully worded language the bank linked the current lack of foreign direct investment to the ”failure” of the government to ”implement a corrective plan to restore investor confidence in the country”.
Swazi authorities have come under fire since last year over the government’s active interference in the judiciary. Human rights groups have raised concerns about the deterioration of the rule of law, which culminated in the resignation of the full Bench of the Swaziland Court of Appeal after the government declared it would not abide by court decisions with which it did not agree.
Swaziland’s support of the African Growth and Opportunities Act had not helped the country to retain existing foreign investments or secure new investment, the bank noted. Manufacturing constituted 35% of the national economy.
Eighty percent of Swazis are involved in agriculture, mostly as peasant farmers on communal land, but agriculture accounts for only 8,5% of the economy and production on communal land has dropped nearly 20% from 2003.
The bank blamed erratic rainfall, but studies by the Ministry of Agriculture also pointed to HIV/Aids, which has had a serious impact on the agricultural workforce.
A positive sign in the agriculture sector was the end of a ban on Swazi beef that had been imposed by the European Union after an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease.
Still, Swaziland failed to fill the quota of beef the EU was obliged to buy according to a joint treaty. — Irin