Supreme court endorses land reform

Zimbabwe's Supreme Court has ruled that President Robert Mugabe's land reform programme to hand over white-owned farms to the landless is lawful and that the rule of law prevails in the countryside, the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) said on Tuesday.

The decision on Monday confirmed a interim ruling by the court in October and effectively overturns an order in November 2000 that land reforms were illegal and that occupiers should be evicted, news reports said.

Four of the five judges hearing the case said they were satisfied that the government had put in place a land reform programme that complied with the constitution.

The CFU said the decision was "unexpected". The ruling clears all legal obstacles that had blocked the government from processing claims to white-owned farms.

Last year the Supreme Court - then made up of four senior judges and former Chief Justice Anthony Gubbay who eventually retired under pressure from the government - ordered the government to end violence on white-owned farms. In August, Mugabe appointed three additional judges to the court, after suffering a series of losses from the previous bench, which had described the government's land acquisition programme as unlawful and unconstitutional.

Pro-government militants, led by veterans of the 1970s liberation war, began forcibly occupying white farms in February 2000.

People living in the countryside - both black and white - have suffered widespread intimidation and violence during the land campaign. The violence has gone largely unpunished by police, and the war veterans' campaign has received the government's open support.