6 believed that the lack of significant re-settlement was either due to government incompetence or corruption in the allocating of land. In fact, the rural smallholder farmer population was and is more concerned with the costs and availability of agricultural inputs, access to finance, and the utility of the available agricultural marketing mechanisms. In other words, small holder farmers were more concerned with making the existing land work more efficiently than in the access to new land. Land did not seem in February 2000 to be an issue that was of concern to the electorate. Nonetheless, and against all available indications, the President ensured that a controversial clause be inserted in the proposed constitution: such a clause had not been included in the draft submitted by the Constitutional Commission. The draft constitution was then rejected by a small majority in the referendum held in February. This rejection was immediately interpreted as a rejection of the land clause, and the government immediately began a campaign of vilifying various sectors of Zimbabwean society for combining with the commercial farmers in an effort to defeat the “legitimate aspirations” of the landless masses, for whom government assumed it held a watching brief. Within weeks of the referendum, a massive and well-organised campaign began of occupying white commercial farms, and, subsequently, a Bill to allow “fast track” land acquisition was passed through Parliament. In fact, it was the closing business of the outgoing Parliament, elected in 1995. The Rule of Law The significance of the above to the current consideration of human rights observance lies wholly in government’s attitude to the rule of law. The first farm invasions took place outside any legal framework, and, in defiance of the yet unalienated rights of the white commercial farmers to their land, the Mugabe government condoned the land invasions. It is not contested by any human rights or civil society organisations that land re-settlement is necessary in Zimbabwe, nor that this process is long overdue, but the deprivation of any individual’s right to the ownership of land and the exercise of that ownership must follow legal process. The first invasions were clearly in breach of the law, and considerably more than merely the breach of trespass, as asserted by the Minister of Justice, Emmerson Mnangagwa. The farmers, in accordance with the law that existed, were thus entitled to the protection of the law, but the orders of the Executive frustrated their rights completely. The President instructed the police not to interfere, and thus the police did not obey their constitutional duty to uphold the law. Court decision after court decision has upheld the right of the farmers to the protection of the law, and it has even been the case that senior policemen have been found in contempt of court for not obeying both their duty and the orders of the court. The only outstanding issue still to be decided is the test case currently before the Supreme Court, which involves testing the constitutionality of the “fast track” land acquisition act.