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Zimbabwe’s White Farmers Plan to Seize Government Property

More news stories on Zimbabwe

Peta Thornycroft and Sebastien Berger, London Telegraph, March 7, 2010

Lawyers for dispossessed farmers believe that on Monday they will be able to start using the law to seize houses in Cape Town which are owned by the Zimbabwean government. Their action, which follows a landmark legal ruling, promises to humiliate Mr Mugabe and embarrass South Africa’s president Jacob Zuma, who was on a state visit to Britain last week.

The battle for justice fought by one of the white farmers, Mike Campbell, aged 77, was featured in the documentary film Mugabe and the White African. It was shown in British cinemas this year to great acclaim.

The film tells how he fought stubbornly to bring a legal case in 2008 against Mr Mugabe’s government at the Southern African Development Community tribunal, based in the Namibian capital Windhoek.

Mr Campbell won a victory when the court ruled that Mr Mugabe’s farm takeovers were racist in nature and therefore illegal.

At the North Gauteng High Court in the South African capital Pretoria last month, the farmers successfully applied for the Namibian judgement to be enforced in South Africa.

Lawyers acting for the Mr Campbell and a group of other farmers believe after that ruling they can seize Zimbabwean government-owned property, to recover legal costs from the South African case.

Mr Campbell, who was severely beaten by land invaders in 2008, was too frail to comment yesterday. But his son-in-law Ben Freeth, 41, said: “This is not about revenge. This is about the long arm of the law.

“We hope to expand our actions further and investigate whether we can, in time, sue individuals who were responsible for what has been going on.”

Late last year Mr Freeth watched helplessly as thugs burned down his farmhouse in Zimbabwe.

Their representatives have identified at least 11 properties which are owned by the government of Zimbabwe, including houses in Cape Town worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. Unlike properties in Pretoria which are connected to the embassy, the Cape Town properties are thought not to be protected by diplomatic immunity.

The lawyers say it will be a groundbreaking development, as they are not aware of any precedent for government-owned properties being seized in pursuit of a civil judgement.

The timing is awkward for Mr Zuma. This week the South African president called for Western sanctions to be lifted against Mr Mugabe and his cronies, during a state visit to Britain. The EU recently renewed sanctions for another year, although Western officials point out the sanctions hit only only specific regime members rather than the Zimbabwean people as a whole.

The former opposition Movement for Democratic Change went into a coalition with Mr Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party just over a year ago, but the agreement has been beset by difficulties. At one point the MDC boycotted cabinet meetings for several weeks, blaming obstructionism by Zanu-PF.

In the meantime seizures of white-owned farms have continued.

The SADC tribunal has yet to set an amount to be paid in compensation, but the lawyers say they are already able to seek the seizures to recover costs in connection with the court hearing in South Africa, estimated at about £12,000.

Willie Spies, the lead South African lawyer in the case, said it would be almost impossible for the Zimbabwean government to appeal against the seizures as it had not contested the North Gauteng court ruling.

The South African government was not a party to the proceedings, he added, and while technically it could apply for judicial review it would be in a “moral predicament” if it tried to do so, as in a separate case last year it had formally agreed to “honour and uphold” the SADC tribunal verdict.

“It’s going to be a very interesting test for the independence of our sheriffs and for the South African government,” he said.

The ruling has not been enforceable in Zimbabwe.

Senior Zanu-PF officials have sought to dismiss the significance of the legal proceedings. They have claimed that the SADC tribunal did not have jurisdiction over Zimbabwe, even though the nation is a member of the organisation and government lawyers appeared in court to defend it.

At the time of the SADC tribunal ruling, the then minister of lands, Didymus Mutasa, said: “They are day-dreaming because we are not going to reverse the land reform exercise.”

Patrick Chinamasa, Zimbabwe’s justice minister, could not be reached for comment on the latest developments.

Original article

(Posted on March 8, 2010)

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Comments

1 — Anonymous wrote at 6:51 PM on March 8:

I am not the least bit impressed with this recent turn of events. In fact, it makes me wonder more than ever why any White in their right mind would continue to live in a hell-hole like Zimbabwe!

“But his son-in-law Ben Freeth, 41, said: “This is not about revenge. This is about the long arm of the law.”

Somebody should take this man aside and explain to him the rule of law is dead in Zimbabwe. It died alongside White minority rule. The following three sentences gleaned from the article illustrate this fact perfectly.

“Late last year Mr Freeth watched helplessly as thugs burned down his farmhouse in Zimbabwe.”

“In the meantime seizures of white-owned farms have continued.”

“The ruling has not been enforceable in Zimbabwe.”

As you can see, the barbarians are not at the gates; they’ve been inside for years now, and they’re running the show. Rhodesia, sadly, is dead and buried. We shouldn’t even concern ourselves with what’s going on there, anymore. Rather, we should concentrate our resources and efforts where there is still hope. This “legal victory” is nothing more than a Potemkin Village. Nothing will come of it; mark my words.

One final note: it’s not the wisest thing in the world to embarrass a tinpot thug like Robert Mugabe.

2 — ice wrote at 7:01 PM on March 8:

I imagine it won’t be long before the SA blacks close off any avenue to the courts whites might have right now.

Blacks have no shame and can be counted on to always do what would be an embarassment to any white.

3 — Anonymous wrote at 8:33 PM on March 8:

Why can’t Whites just accept that Africans do not want them in Afica, pack up their bags, and leave for Europe. This is essentially the message Amreners have for non-whites in Europe. Extend non-whites the same courtesy…

4 — Blaak Obongo wrote at 9:17 PM on March 8:

This entire article is a sad joke, implying as it does that due process under the rule of law actually exists for Whites in the black-ruled Eden of Zimbabwe.

Perhaps the London Telegraph could dispatch a reporter to that accursed land, to exhume a few of the slaughtered White farmers and ask them how they feel about legal recourse under the magnificent Zimbabwean legal system.

5 — Istvan wrote at 10:30 PM on March 8:

Judicial decrees only old water in countries with some sort of functioning system of laws and basic rights, neither of which Zimbabwe has. Rather like telling a rabid dog to put down a bone. Without deadly force it ain’t gonna happen.

6 — tactless old pedo wrote at 12:17 AM on March 9:

I think any white person with any self-respect at all would NEVER go to a place like Africa - ANYWHERE in Africa - and expect to be treated fairly. They don’t know what that means in Africa. It’s another case of “you get what you pay for;” the land was probably cheap, and it appealed to people with a sense of adventure. Unfortunately they lacked COMMON sense, and have ended up having their as**s kicked by the natives. I can’t work up a whole lot of sympathy here.

7 — Whitey Lawful wrote at 1:15 AM on March 9:

Apartheid, was there for a reason.

8 — white is right, black is whack wrote at 1:26 AM on March 9:

Whites should leave Zimbabwe or any non-white country, go to the white world and expose like hell the corruption to other whites so they stop feeling sorry and stop donating money, and then let these non-white countries just go by the way side. Nature will take its course.

9 — Anonymous wrote at 2:57 AM on March 9:

Why can’t Whites just accept that Africans do not want them in Afica, pack up their bags, and leave for Europe


Well, for one, those were white countries. Built by whites on land nobody lived on. Once whites built the farms, the cities, the industrial base and then the technological base, blacks moved on in and started making demands.

The mistake whites made was not shooting the very first black person to show up looking for a handout. Make no mistake though, NOTHING of those two countries came from blacks. They are essentially welfare squatters who showed up after all the work was done.

10 — eduard wrote at 5:29 AM on March 9:

“Before 1980 tourists used to go to Zimbabwe to see the Zimbabwean ruines, now they go there to see the Ruines of Zimbabwe”

“In the old South Africa you drive on the left side of the road, in the new South Africa you drive on what’s left of the road”.

Easy for some folks to say get out: the question is where to? The cuntry is in a shambles, the infrastructure is crumbling and not to mention the murders and the rapes. The proof is in the pudding: the black race is a criminal race, he wants everything but cannot create anything.

11 — Anonymous wrote at 5:35 AM on March 9:

“Why can’t Whites just accept that Africans do not want them in Afica, pack up their bags, and leave for Europe. This is essentially the message Amreners have for non-whites in Europe. Extend non-whites the same courtesy…”

First of all, these Whites will have to have somewhere to go. Is Europe or anywhere else going to let them in???

12 — olewhitelady wrote at 8:41 AM on March 9:

Many of the whites in the sub-Saharan are at least third generation. They own(ed) family farms that employed hundreds of locals and, in total, fed their nations. Their respective countries are as dear to them as our own.
These people brought gifts of modernism to the Africans that the latter would never want to relinquish. The problem is that too many blacks there believe that the absence of whites has nothing to do with the running of farms and factories, maintenance of the roads, etc. These institutions will just continue to magically function, many think. Some nations have come to grips with the incompetence of the majority of African blacks and are now leasing farmland to native whites and the Chinese.
Mugabe will have to die, it seems, before Zimbabwe has a chance to recover with similar measures.

13 — Techno Dan wrote at 1:04 PM on March 9:

Anonymous wrote: “Why can’t Whites just accept that Africans do not want them in Afica, pack up their bags, and leave for Europe.”

Well, that would be nice if some Western nation would take them, but what Western country does? Reading about that situation here at AmRen leads me to believe that they do not want these nasty racist swine from Zimbabwe and South Africa.

14 — Whiteplight wrote at 3:29 PM on March 9:

9 — Anonymous wrote at 2:57 AM on March 9:

Ques;
“Why can’t Whites just accept that Africans do not want them in Afica, pack up their bags, and leave for Europe”

Ans;
“Well, for one, those were white countries. Built by whites on land nobody lived on. Once whites built the farms, the cities, the industrial base and then the technological base, blacks moved on in and started making demands.

The mistake whites made was not shooting the very first black person to show up looking for a handout. Make no mistake though, NOTHING of those two countries came from blacks. They are essentially welfare squatters who showed up after all the work was done.”

> This is a very simplistic and untrue rendering of the situation. In all of the South African regions where Whites settled, except for the Boers, blacks were hired as farm laborers, miners, (gold and diamond mines), and other labor intensive tasks by the European managers, who would not have been able to create those highly profitable businesses and establish their power in the state. These blacks had to migrate into the regions for the jobs and in difficult times, more than needed would show up. Perhaps they were foolish in the numbers they willingly brought in, and perhaps they did not imagine the population problems inherent with uneducated, native peoples. This would seem naive to me. Especially for people living in then active and experienced empires. Apartied was a management system that failed due to external pressures, true, but it was failing because the race ratios had reached a disproportionate size that required increased policing and increased severity that was not congruent with the modern standards of civilization. Sorting out the fallout will take time and along the way we have to suffer through the backlash against whites, extremes in government, etc. What we ought to be concerned with is how racism against whites figures into African politics so often when it was anti-racism that brought about anti-apartied sentiments and the hypocrisy of the West in ignoring this while Europe and the West is obviously and pathetically racially overcompensating against whites, its own native populations in some sort of sick version of religious and political atonement for perceived and popularized myths concerning the era of empire, industrial revolution, etc.

But it is not realistic to think that Europe could sustain itself through economic and political inversion and isolation. No country can. The Soviet systems failed largely because they were isolated and inverted socially and economically. Land locked nations are historically poor. Neither Europe, nor the U.S. gained it power and had its flowering due to isolationism and lack of trade. In fact, history reads it as the exact opposite. It helps to sort issues out when we first seek to recognize in which historical epoch we are currently living and and subject to. This would assist in forming understandings regarding historical statutes of limitation, because ultimately, as many Amren posters know, we all have a claim. That would help defeat many bogus claims for restitutions as well as excuses for lack of success in the current eras.

15 — Tancred wrote at 4:07 AM on March 11:

And today on the BBC we hear pleas from the red Cross for money from white Europeans to go and feed the starving blacks in Zimbabwe……

They can take a hike!

They wanted a post colonial Africa (or should I now say Afrika).

They got it.

Why should we help them after they have stolen white farms and raped and slaughtered the white population that fed them?

16 — Anonymous wrote at 4:33 PM on March 11:

But it is not realistic to think that Europe could sustain itself through economic and political inversion and isolation. No country can. The Soviet systems failed largely because they were isolated and inverted socially and economically. Land locked nations are historically poor. Neither Europe, nor the U.S. gained it power and had its flowering due to isolationism and lack of trade. In fact, history reads it as the exact opposite. It helps to sort issues out when we first seek to recognize in which historical epoch we are currently living and and subject to. This would assist in forming understandings regarding historical statutes of limitation, because ultimately, as many Amren posters know, we all have a claim. That would help defeat many bogus claims for restitutions as well as excuses for lack of success in the current eras.

So then Whiteplight, why are you a WN? I agree with your premise that isolation more often than not is economically, culturally, and technologically inefficient and that co-development is the time-tested road to sustainable progress. Accordingly, concepts such as ethnic nationalism are irrational and inefficient…

17 — Irish wrote at 9:47 PM on March 11:

Never mind seizing government buildings, like some 1960s campus protestor. They should seize the government itself. Is there any doubt they could, if acting determinedly and in concert, put the corrupt moronic rabble currently in power to flight?


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