Zimbabwean lawyers on Monday urged President Robert Mugabe’s government to scrap a Bill that will prevent white farmers from legally challenging land grabs, saying it makes a mockery of the law.
”This a direct and undisguised frontal attack on the independence of the judiciary,” the Law Society of Zimbabwe (LSZ) said in a statement on the eve of the Bill’s tabling in Parliament, where it is expected to be passed.
”Under the circumstances, the LSZ urges the government of Zimbabwe to abandon its current moves to remove protection of the law and oust the power and jurisdiction of the judiciary.”
The Zimbabwean Parliament will on Tuesday vote on the Bill that, if passed, will also bar people perceived to be anti-government from travelling abroad.
It will also disenfranchise all those who have one or more foreign parents and hold permanent residency status but not full citizenship.
”The amendment, if promulgated, will seriously erode, if not remove, the fundamental rights to property, secure protection of the law and freedom of movement,” said the nearly 2 000-member LSZ.
The reforms also aim to introduce a bicameral Parliament that critics say is meant to boost Mugabe’s hold on the legislature and accommodate more ruling-party members.
Zimbabwe’s land reforms, which began, often violently, in 2000 after the rejection in a referendum of a government-sponsored draft Constitution, have seen about 4 000 white farmers lose their properties.
The land has been redistributed to landless blacks in a move that the government has said is designed to correct imbalances created by colonial rule, when the majority of prime farmland was owned by about 4 500 whites.
Critics say the majority of the beneficiaries lack farming knowledge and depend on government handouts.
Human rights lawyers say about 4 000 former white commercial farmers are challenging the seizure of their properties.
For the Bill to be passed, the governing Zanu-PF needs 100 votes. The party has 107 members in Parliament, including chiefs. — Sapa-AFP