Farmers want Zim suspended from SADC

LAWYERS representing Zimbabwean farmers have requested the SADC Tribunal to recommend that SADC either terminate or suspend Zimbabwe’s membership for ignoring an earlier Tribunal order to allow peaceful residence of over 70 farmers and farmworkers on their farms.

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) is holding a summit meeting in Windhoek next month.Should the SADC Tribunal grant the application, the regional heads of state would have to handle this hot potato of calling Zimbabwe to order. The application was brought by Zimbabwean commercial farmers Louis Fick, Michael Campbell and Richard Etheredge, the Commercial Farmers’ Union of Zimbabwe and the Southern African Commercial Farmers’ Alliance, Zimbabwe branch.No legal team of the Zimbabwe government was present at the Tribunal yesterday. The farmers won a Tribunal ruling in December 2008 but the Zimbabwean government has ignored it up to now and physical violence and intimidation of the farmers and their workers is continuing. Last year the farmers approached the SADC Tribunal again, asking it to declare the Zimbabwe government in breach of the SADC Treaty for failing to comply with its earlier ruling.The Tribunal granted the application and referred the matter to the 2009 SADC summit, but nothing came of it.’If the tribunal says ‘no’ to us, this could send a terrible message to the world and if the [upcoming] SADC summit decides to do nothing [about Zimbabwe] again, the world attention would be on the summit,’ Senior Counsel Jeremy Gauntlett told the three Tribunal judges yesterday.According to Gauntlett, it was critical that the functions of the SADC Tribunal should be respected.A second breach, in his view, was that Zimbabwe failed to register the 2008 Tribunal ruling in its domestic court as the SADC Treaty stipulates.’If a SADC member state in breach of the treaty can say that a treaty does not conform with its domestic laws and this [view] is allowed and a country can shield behind this argument and use it as an escape clause for any domestic court, the SAC Tribunal rulings will come to nothing,’ Gauntlett said. Justice Ariranga Govindasamy Pillay of Mauritius, who chaired the hearing, reserved judgement. The other two judges were Justice Isaac Jamu Mtambo of Malawi and Justice Luis Antonio Mondlane of Mozambique.