JUSTICE IN ZIMBABWE 66 ____________________________________________________________________ various pieces of legislation enabled the Minister of Lands, Agriculture and Rural Resettlement to acquire ownership of any farm he chose by administrative action, namely the issue of an order under the Land Acquisition Act. Having issued the order he could subdivide the farm and allocate the subdivisions to settlers, effectively evicting the former owner by preventing him from using the land. In the same way — by issuing an order under the Land Acquisition Act — the Minister could validate the unlawful seizure of a farm by settlers (against whose depredations the owner had no effective remedy) by acquiring the farm and parcelling it out to the settlers. The Minister did not have to apply to a court before doing any of this: all he needed to do, if the former owner raised any objection, was to apply to the Administrative Court for a confirming order within thirty days after issuing his order acquiring the farm. By the time the application could be heard, the settlers would be in place and the acquisition would be a fait accompli. Looked at broadly in this way, how could the legislation be said to comply with the rule of law which, in its original formulation by Dicey, stated that no one should be deprived of rights and freedoms through the arbitrary exercise of wide discretionary powers by the executive? And can a process of acquisition which for all practical purposes can be concluded irrevocably without recourse to the courts, be said to conform with s 16 of the Constitution?120 Concluding comments It is obvious from this survey of the main judgments in relation to government’s land resettlement exercise that various judges have approached this issue from completely different perspectives. The High Court judges who gave judgments in the earlier High Court cases and the Gubbay-led Supreme Court were primarily concerned about the violence and general lawlessness associated with land invasions. Whilst the judges made it clear that they fully understood and accepted the pressing need for equitable land reform, these judges rightly maintained that their judicial duty was to ensure that land reform was not carried out in violation of the law. On the basis of a considerable amount of credible evidence, — mostly undisputed — the Gubbay-led Supreme Court decided that land reform was being conducted on a violent and chaotic basis and in clear breach of various fundamental rights.