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By Zelda Venter 
2h ago
Pretoria – Former Zimbabwean farmers who lost their farms are asking the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, to give them the go-ahead to claim compensation against the South African government.
The farmers intend to cumulatively claim around R2 billion from the South African government after then-President Jacob Zuma signed a SADC resolution in 2014 that removed his court’s powers over member states.
This came in the wake of the Zimbabwe land dispute, and after farmers went to court to be compensated for losing their farms.
The then Law Society of South Africa previously questioned the role that Zuma and the government played in closing the court.
Some of the commercial farmers who were dispossessed of their farms by former Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe were also among those who joined the legal challenge.
The higher court ordered at that time that the president should withdraw his signature from the decision eliminating the powers of the court.
Subsequently, the Constitutional Court upheld this order and determined that “the president’s decision to make the court dysfunctional is unconstitutional, illegal and irrational.”
The farmers went to court because they could not go to their own country to obtain compensation after the expropriation of their land.
But Zuma and other SADC leaders signed a protocol in 2014, which stripped the court of its powers.
By doing this, the courts found that he, among others, violated the right of South African citizens to access justice in terms of our Bill of Rights.
It limited the jurisdiction of the SADC Court to disputes only between member states and no longer between individual citizens and states of the SADC region.
The SADC Court was established in 2005 to resolve disputes involving southern African states and their citizens.
In 2009, Zimbabwe challenged the legitimacy of the tribunal on the grounds that it had not been established in accordance with the norms of international law. This came after the court criticized Zimbabwe’s land reform and ruled that the Zimbabwean government restore the land of farmers who had targeted it.
It was also ruled that Zimbabwe should compensate them for the loss they had suffered.
This led to the revision of the protocol and the removal of the court’s power to hear disputes filed by citizens against states.
Its mandate was limited to handling disputes between SADC member states only.
As Zuma was one of the signatories to the resolution and the courts found his signature on the 2014 Protocol to be constitutionally invalid, the farmers now want to claim compensation that they say the court would have ordered Zimbabwe to pay them, from the South African government. .
However, the government said that the alleged damage was based on a loss suffered abroad (the inability of the Namibia-based SADC Tribunal to receive, hear and determine the claims against Zimbabwe) had nothing to do with the government of South Africa.
He also objected to the claim, stating that the majority of the plaintiffs were Zimbabweans and had no connection with the South African government.
The farmers, asking to be allowed to pursue their claims, said that the Constitutional Court had found that Zuma, along with other SADC heads of state, intentionally terminated their access to the only regional international human rights court.
They said that the government should now compensate them and that their claim should be allowed to continue in this court.
The trial was reserved.
Pretoria News
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