JUSTICE IN ZIMBABWE 56 ____________________________________________________________________ SECTION B – SPECIFIC CASES Topic 1 1. THE LAND CASES107 Introduction War veteran led occupations of white owned farms started to occur at the end of February 2000. The occupiers were assisted to carry out these occupations by various government agencies who provided transport and monthly stipends to the occupiers. Within a short space of time people had occupied farms throughout the country. 108 Once on these farms, the occupiers often perpetrated acts of violence or threatened violence against the commercial farmers and farm workers. The government of Zimbabwe portrayed these occupations as a manifestation by land-hungry people of their impatience with the slow pace of land redistribution and accelerated the process of acquisition of farms for re-settlement via the Land Acquisition Act. Commercial farmers, usually represented by the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU), brought a series of court cases seeking protection from illegal actions by the occupiers, or sought rulings that the government had failed to follow its own laws in attempting to acquire farms for resettlement. The survey that follows deals mainly with the contrasting Supreme Court cases. The interdict case This case is reported as Commercial Farmers Union v Minister of Lands & Ors 2000 (2) ZLR 469 (S). The CFU applied to the Supreme Court, sitting as a constitutional court, for a declaration that the government’s land acquisition exercise was not being undertaken in accordance with a programme of land reform, as required by the Constitution, and sought an interdict preventing the government from taking further steps to acquire land for resettlement until a proper programme had been put in place.