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Zimbabwe strips whites of ability to challenge land seizures

Sunday, September 18, 2005; Posted: 12:39 p.m. EDT (16:39 GMT)

Robert Mugabe says white farmers stole their land from Zimbabwe's blacks.

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) -- Zimbabwe's government has annulled more than 4,000 white farmers' challenges to a mass eviction campaign, following changes to the constitution to end freehold real estate title and owners' rights to appeal against seizure, according to a newspaper report.

"All the challenges are now useless and there is only need to formally withdraw the issues before the courts," the chief law officer in the attorney general's office, Nelson Mutsonziwa, was quoted as saying in the state-owned Sunday Mail.

He said around 4,000 cases were pending before the Administrative Court and the passing of the Constitutional Amendment Act into law meant they were "all being nullified."

The constitutional overhaul strips landowners of their right to appeal expropriation of their property by the state and declares all real estate is now on a 99-year lease from the government.

Mutsonziwa, who said the government "wants all the cases put to rest," plans to seek a legal order Monday making farmers responsible for costs they incurred trying to resist eviction.

President Robert Mugabe, 81, in power since 1980 independence from Britain, blamed whites for loss of a February 2000 constitutional referendum and ordered governing party militants to seize 5,000 commercial farms, covering 17 percent of the country.

He said they had been stolen from blacks when whites colonized the country, formerly known as Rhodesia, in 1890. Since 2000, agricultural output and exports have crashed, leaving 4 million Zimbabweans in urgent need of famine relief.

On September 8, Mugabe said 63 percent of Zimbabweans were living in poverty, with 48 percent unable to afford even basic food and necessities.

Blaming black marketeers and informal street traders for shortages and soaring prices, the government launched a two-month blitz earlier this year, code named "Operation Murambatsvina" (drive out filth), destroying tens of thousands of houses, prefabricated cabins and shacks.

Last week, Human Rights Watch said the operation had violated the rights of hundreds of thousands of Zimbabwe's citizens and it demanded those responsible be brought to justice.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/africa/09/18/zimbabwe.farms.ap/index.html

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