Banished Zimbabwe farmer to sue country
Business Day, Johannesburg
Banished Zimbabwe Farmer to Sue Country
5 May 2008
By Chantelle Benjamin, Johannesburg
Taxpayers may have to pay millions of rands in compensation for the government’s failure to act in Zimbabwe when hundreds of white-owned farms belonging to South Africans were confiscated in 2000.
Free State farmer Crawford von Abo is taking President Thabo Mbeki, Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and Trade and Industry Minister Mandisi Mpahlwa to court to force the government to ratify a treaty that protects South African investments abroad, or pay him R80m in compensation. Von Abo has been battling for six years to have confiscated farms in Zimbabwe restored to him.
Von Abo’s bid to recover losses could open the way for similar court actions. More than 100 South African farmers lost land in Zimbabwe.
Von Abo, a former chairman of SA’s maize and wheat boards and a Zimbabwe resident, had farmed in Zimbabwe since the 1950s and employed more than 1000 Zimbabweans until he was arrested in 2002 for contravening Zimbabwe’s Land Acquisition Act by refusing to leave his farm. At the time he owned only one farm, Fauna, 100km north of Beitbridge.
Von Abo is to bring an urgent application this week to compel the government to legalise the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) — a mediation facility set up by the World Bank to protect foreign investment in 144 member countries. Von Abo is asking as an alternative for the government to compensate him for the land he lost.
Von Abo argues that the government failed to provide him with diplomatic protection, his constitutional right, and was "passive" and "sluggish" when it came to acting against Zimbabwe’s unlawful confiscation of land. He also accused the government of not sending a witness to his court case.
At the time of his arrest, Von Abo said intervention by officials from other countries, in particular France and Germany, saw land returned to those nationals from farms neighbouring his.
The South African Law Commission recommended a few years ago that SA give the ICSID legal status. This would protect companies with business interests abroad. At least 42 African countries, including Zimbabwe, are signatories.
Democratic Alliance (DA) MP Andries Botha said that in 2002 the DA had handed the names of more than 120 South African citizens who lost farms in Zimbabwe to the South African government, but little was done to assist them. He said the party asked again last year what was being done to assist citizens who lost farms but had yet to get a definitive reply.
In 2002, the foreign affairs department insisted it had intervened when Von Abo was arrested and had "raised the matter with Zimbabwean authorities, including the principal of lands".
