Judge orders 10-day halt to farm seizures

A judge in Zimbabwe has granted white farmers an interim injunction barring the President, Robert Mugabe, from seizing their land.

Judge Benjamin Paradza made the ruling in the High Court after farmers who defied a ban to stop working their land were charged under the law paving the way for farm seizures. Although the ruling was in favour of only George Quinnell, the farmer who filed the court application, it will help at least 2,900 farmers.

Judge Paradza said the Agriculture Minister, Joseph Made, and the Justice Minister, Patrick Chinamasa, who had been spearheading the campaign to evict farmers and were cited as respondents in the application, had not been government ministers since the presidential elections in March.

Mr Mugabe, who won the election, did not appoint a cabinet. Under Zimbabwean law, all his ministers should have retaken the oath of office. Judge Paradza also said the land seizure law had been passed illegally. The government has 10 days to respond to the ruling and cannot seize land during that period.

The decision came as Harare magistrates' court acquitted 10 white farmers charged with public violence against supporters of the land seizure programme.

The farmers, who were among 21 detained for weeks last year before being released on bail, said they had been caught in violence after coming to rescue one farmer whom the settlers were trying to drive off his property.

The farmers' lawyer, Jeremy Callow, said the court had found 10 farmers not guilty after the state had dropped charges against the 11 others.