Africa News
SADC court postpones Zimbabwe farmers' hearing to July (Roundup)
By DPA
May 28, 2008, 15:08 GMT

Windhoek, Namibia - A southern African court on Wednesday postponed a hearing in the case of 78 Zimbabwean farmers challenging the expropriation of their farms until July in order to give the Zimbabwean state more time to prepare.

Granting a request from Zimbabwe's deputy attorney general, Prince Machaya, for a postponement, the tribunal of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) sitting in the Namibian capital Windhoek set down July 16-18 for a new hearing.

Machaya had sought the postponement on the basis that the state - the respondent in the case - had not yet prepared all its documents.

The judges ordered that the respondent file all the documents by June 18.

The 78 farmers, among the around 300 white farmers still working the land in Zimbabwe, turned to the regional court after being threatened with expropriation by the government of President Robert Mugabe.

Reacting to Wednesday's postponement Ben Freeth, son-in-law of William Michael Campbell, the first of the group to take his case to the SADC court, said: 'As far as I'm concerned justice delayed is justice denied.'

Campbell said he was 'very worried' about his farmworkers, given the current campaign of violence by pro-Mugabe youth militia against opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) supporters in the wake of March elections. The MDC says 50 of its members have been killed in these attacks.

'Our labourers are hassled because they are perceived to be MDC (Movement for Democratic Change),' Campbell said.

Campbell last year was granted an urgent interdict by the SADC tribunal barring the government from seizing his farm pending a full hearing in Zimbabwe on the legality of land seizures.

In March the tribunal ordered the Zimbabwean government to halt the eviction of a further 73 farmers from their property and granted them and four others who had already been evicted the right to have their cases heard along with Campbell.

Over 4,000 white farmers in Zimbabwe have had their land expropriated since 2000 when Mugabe gave ruling party members and cronies the nod to seize white-owned farms without compensation, often violently.

The invasions by war veterans (mostly youth militia rather than veterans of the country's war for independence from Britain) resulted in large-scale food shortages and a mass exodus of Zimbabweans to neighbouring countries, particularly South Africa.

Earlier Wednesday the tribunal threw out a last-minute application by a group of around 200 farmers earmarked to benefit from the expropriations to intervene in the case.

The SADC tribunal, established in 1992, is tasked with ensuring that the bloc's 14 members respect the SADC treaty, which calls for respect for the rule of law, among other things.