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SA court defers ruling on Zim farms case
by James Mombe
JOHANNESBURG – South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal on Monday postponed ruling on an appeal by the government against an earlier court order that it compensates a South African farmer for farms lost in Zimbabwe.
The farmer, Crawford von Abo, lost his 14 farms in Zimbabwe when they were expropriated under President Robert Mugabe’s controversial land reform programme.
The High Court ruled last year that Pretoria should have provided diplomatic protection for Von Abo’s properties and that because it had not done so it should compensate the farmer for his loses.
Mugabe has over the past eight years seized white-owned farms for re-distribution to landless blacks in a programme he says was meant to correct a colonial and unjust land tenure system that reserved the best arable land for whites while blacks were crowded on poor soils.
But veteran leader’s chaotic and often violent land reform programme also saw several farms owned by foreigners and protected under bilateral trade agreements between Zimbabwe and other countries seized without compensation.
However South Africa And Zimbabwe only signed an investment protection agreement in November 2009, well after Von Abo had lost his properties.
Source: ZimOnline
by James Mombe
JOHANNESBURG – South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal on Monday postponed ruling on an appeal by the government against an earlier court order that it compensates a South African farmer for farms lost in Zimbabwe.
The farmer, Crawford von Abo, lost his 14 farms in Zimbabwe when they were expropriated under President Robert Mugabe’s controversial land reform programme.
The High Court ruled last year that Pretoria should have provided diplomatic protection for Von Abo’s properties and that because it had not done so it should compensate the farmer for his loses.
Mugabe has over the past eight years seized white-owned farms for re-distribution to landless blacks in a programme he says was meant to correct a colonial and unjust land tenure system that reserved the best arable land for whites while blacks were crowded on poor soils.
But veteran leader’s chaotic and often violent land reform programme also saw several farms owned by foreigners and protected under bilateral trade agreements between Zimbabwe and other countries seized without compensation.
However South Africa And Zimbabwe only signed an investment protection agreement in November 2009, well after Von Abo had lost his properties.
Source: ZimOnline
