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Africa: Subsaharan
Zimbabwe’s parliament to vote on land seizures
2005-08-28
HARARE - Zimbabwe’s parliament meets on Tuesday to vote on a bill that will bar white farmers from legally challenging land seizures, a move they say will further undermine the country’s democratic credentials.

The Constitutional Amendment Bill will also prevent people deemed anti-government from travelling abroad and introduce a bicameral parliament, which critics say is meant to boost President Robert Mugabe’s hold on the legislature and accommodate more ruling party members. “The new bill will effectively suspend the rule of law, undermine the judiciary and will be a blow to investor confidence,” said Leslie George Smith, a member of the all-white Commercial Farmers’ Union (CFU).

The bill reads: “A person having any right or interest in the land shall not apply to any court to challenge the acquisition of the land by the state and no court shall entertain any such challenge.”

Another CFU member said on condition of anonymity that the “bill will merely legalise and encourage widespread looting of the productive sector in Zimbabwe which would lead to further unemployment and crime.”
He's right, though I didn't realize there was a productive sector left.
He said it would also legitimise “a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the productive Euro-African sector as part of a political campaign to eliminate all forms of opposition or perceived opposition against the ruling party.”

A committee of lawmakers who consulted interested parties three weeks ago, urged parliament to amend the clause on farm seizures to allow aggrieved farmers to seek redress in court. “It would be in furtherance of the tenets of natural justice that any aggrieved person be given the right to approach the courts for arbitration where there is a dispute,” the committee said in a report to parliament.

The Zimbabwean government last month published proposed constitutional reforms that will allow the state to assume ownership of farms immediately after a property has been officially listed for expropriation. The reforms will also allow the government to confiscate passports and impose travel bans on people who it thinks pose a risk to the “national, public and economic interests of the state.”
More steps on the road to totalitarian dictatorship, though the Zims are pretty far down that road already.
Former information minister Jonathan Moyo described the clause on travel restrictions as “paranoia gone too far,” adding that all one needed nowadays was a password and not a passport to interact with people abroad.

Lovemore Madhuku, a constitutional law expert and head of a leading civic group, said: “This is a government which is refusing to change its stance in undermining all tenets of democracy.” Irene Petras, spokesperson for the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) said: “By its very nature, the amendment bill seeks to abolish the bill of rights and usurps the powers of the judiciary in Zimbabwe.”

For the bill to be passed, the governing Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) needs 107 votes, the exact number of members it has in parliament.
Posted by:Steve White

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