By Alex Bell
17 August 2010
Leaders in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) have put off confronting Robert Mugabe over his refusal to abide by rulings of the regional human rights courts, in a move that threatens the credibility of the Tribunal.
SADC leaders have been meeting in Namibia this week for a heads of state Summit which came to an end on Tuesday. It was widely hoped that the Summit would bow to pressure to take action against Zimbabwe for openly snubbing the authority of the Tribunal, which ruled that Mugabe’s land grab campaign was unlawful.
But SADC has instead decided to wait until the completion of a report on Zimbabwe’s refusal to honour the Tribunal, apparently meant to be undertaken by the region’s different justice ministers. That report has not been completed and the issue has been shelved until the next summit in 2011.
The Tribunal in 2008 ordered the Zimbabwean government to compensate owners for the farms that were seized and to protect the farmers’ rights to their land. Those orders have all been ignored in Zimbabwe and the Tribunal has since ruled the government as being in contempt - three times.
In Zimbabwe the Tribunal has been openly snubbed by the government, with Robert Mugabe and Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa declaring that the Tribunal’s rulings were ‘null and void’. A shock High Court decision then followed this year with Justice Bharat Patel ruling that the Tribunal’s orders on land reform have no authority in Zimbabwe.
The government’s refusal to honour the ruling has also left a number of South African farmers fighting to protect their properties in Zimbabwe. They’ve appealed to their government in South Africa to intervene, to no avail. South African President Jacob Zuma, the SADC appointed mediator in the Zimbabwe crisis, didn’t even bother mentioning the situation while addressing the Summit in Windhoek this week. He instead gave a “glowing” report on the unity government’s progress.
Athol Trollip, the parliamentary leader for South Africa’s main political opposition the Democratic Alliance (DA), expressed his anger on Tuesday, saying that President Zuma’s muted approach to Zimbabwe’s brazen contempt for the Tribunal’s ruling has further undermined the legitimacy of the highly-respected SADC Tribunal - and that of SADC itself.
“The South African government’s silence on this matter is as concerning as the Zimbabwean government’s clear disregard for the rule of law. That the Tribunal’s ruling impacts the rights of the many South Africans who live, work and invest in the Zimbabwean farming community, and the economy in general, raises further questions about the ANC government’s decision not to comment publicly on this matter,” Trollip said.
The DA official told SW Radio Africa on Tuesday that Zuma’s government “has placed its political affiliations above the rights of its own citizens.” He accused Zuma of allowing “Mugabe’s despotic tendencies to flourish and the rights of South African citizens in Zimbabwe to be repeatedly and systematically abused.”
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