Zimbabwe: South Africa farming union insists land grab victims be protected
SW Radio Africa (London) | 20 November 2009
Zimbabwe: South Africa Farming Union Insists Land Grab Victims Be Protected
Alex Bell
South Africa’s main agriculture and farming union has expressed concern about the bilateral investment treaty agreed with Zimbabwe, which is set to exclude South African owned farms that were expropriated by the Robert Mugabe regime during the chaotic land ’reform’ programme.
Agri-SA this week said the land grab in Zimbabwe should form part of the agreement, set to be signed with South Africa in Harare next week. The organisation has urged the South African government "not to buckle under pressure" from Zimbabwe to exclude the land ’reform’ programme from the agreement.
South African Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies, last week told South African newspaper Business Day that the bilateral agreement with Zimbabwe will provide security for any South African investor in any sector, including agriculture, from now on. He said South Africa wanted to create certainty for investments in Zimbabwe that would also help with its economic recovery, without reopening ’old wounds’.
But Davies continued that it would have been impossible to negotiate this agreement with a ’retrospective clause’, with regards to expropriated land, saying South Africa believed it was necessary to contribute to stabilising the economy in Zimbabwe, which would also contribute to political stability.
But in a statement released on Thursday, Agri-SA expressed concern that the content of the agreement had not yet been discussed with the South African business community. Instead, business people have been invited to participate in an investment seminar on November 27, in Harare, where the agreement is to be signed.
"Expectations are still that the agreement should only be finalised once the South African government has completed its policy review on bilateral agreements, and that the government should not buckle under pressure from the Zimbabwean government to exclude its land reform programme results from such an agreement," Agri-SA said.
The group is set to hold a meeting next week to discuss a collective action in response to reports that the South African government would sign the investment protection agreement next week. Agri-SA and Zimbabwe’s Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) have invited all South Africans with farms in Zimbabwe to attend the meeting, where a forum would be set up to raise collective concerns with the South African government.
"The forum will also consider other mechanisms at its disposal to ensure that fairness and justice prevails regarding the confiscation of assets in Zimbabwe," Agri-SA said.
Several hundred South African citizens own agricultural land in Zimbabwe and, like the majority of commercial farmers in the country, have been stripped of their land and farming assets by Mugabe’s regime. This includes South African farmer Louis Fick, who is in the middle of a land wrangle with Deputy Reserve Bank Governor, Edward Mashiringwani. Fick has received absolutely no assistance from his own government, while Mashiringwani and his hired men have forcibly seized the farm with complete impunity. At stake are Fick’s pigs and crocodiles that the farmer is desperately trying to save from starvation, as Mashiringwani’s men have refused to feed or water them, to force Fick to give up the farm.
Fick meanwhile is one of more than 70 farmers who were awarded legal protection of their land through the human rights court of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) last year. The SADC Tribunal ruled that the farmers had been unlawfully deprived of their property and that the Zimbabwean government should restore their rights or compensate them. But the ruling has been completely ignored, and the Tribunal itself snubbed by the government, which has been charged with contempt. SADC meanwhile, including former chair South Africa, has made no comment about the snub, which included Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa announcing Zimbabwe was pulling out of the Tribunal.
Agri-SA said such silence, particularly from the South African government, would amount to ’retrospective approval’ of the Mugabe regime’s unlawful actions. The group said the ongoing silence would also "render suspect the South African government’s commitment to endorse legal principles and rulings of SADC institutions, of which it forms part."
