A Southern African regional tribunal based in Namibia said on Tuesday that it would rule this week on an appeal filed by a white Zimbabwean farmer who was evicted from his land.
”We will deliver a ruling before the end of the week,” Judge Onkemetse Tshosa, president of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) tribunal, said after a three-hour preliminary hearing in the landmark suit.
It is the first time the regional court came together since its 10 judges were sworn in in the Namibian capital, Windhoek, in February 2006.
Zimbabwean farmer William Michael Campbell is seeking court relief for himself, his family and all his employees on his farm, Mount Carmell, ”from the continued onslaught of invasions and intimidation”, according to court papers.
”We filed a case to challenge the Zimbabwe government’s constitutional amendment removing the legal right of farm owners to challenge compulsory land expropriations in a court in the Harare Supreme Court this year March and are still awaiting a ruling,” said Adrian de Bourbon, his lawyer.
”This left us with no legal relief or remedy in Zimbabwe and we approached the SADC tribunal.
”We seek interim relief for the applicant [Campbell] to remain on his farm and we seek to revert to the situation of March 2007, when the case was heard in the Harare Supreme Court,” the lawyer told the three judges hearing the case.
He said his client was seeking a court interdict to enable him stay on the farm until the ruling from the supreme court.
Campbell is currently facing criminal charges in a Zimbabwe district magistrate court for still being on his farm and he could face up to two years in prison for this ”offence”, de Bourbon said after the hearing.
In October, a group of 11 white farmers in Zimbabwe filed an appeal seeking a court order to help stop their planned evictions after a magistrate in Chegutu, north-west of Harare, ruled the group had been abusing the legal process in order to delay their fate.
A lawyer who represented the Zimbabwean government in the court argued that the tribunal could only be approached ”once all domestic avenues seeking relief” were exhausted.
The SADC tribunal was officially convened April as part of peer-review mechanism within SADC. — Sapa-AFP