HARARE – The Southern African Development Community (SADC) Tribunal will rule on an application by a group of Zimbabwean white farmers against the seizure of their land by President Robert Mugabe’s government on September 11, a senior official with the court said.

“As you already know the court was adjourned in July but it is now going to sit to deliver judgment on 11 September,” said Dennis Shivangulula, an official with the Windhoek based regional court.

The regional court had temporarily barred the Harare government from confiscating land belonging to 77 white farmers pending the outcome of an application by the farmers challenging the legality of Mugabe’s programme to seize white-owned land for redistribution to landless blacks.

The white farmers want the Tribunal to declare Mugabe’s controversial land reform programme racist and illegal under the SADC Treaty.

Article 6 of the regional treaty bars member states from discriminating against any person on the grounds of gender, religion, race, ethnic origin and culture.

A ruling declaring land reform illegal would have far reaching consequences for Mugabe’s government, opening the floodgates to thousands of claims of damages by dispossessed white farmers.

Such a ruling could also set the Harare government on a collision course with its SADC allies particularly if it – as it has always done with court rulings against its land reforms – refuses to abide by an unfavourable Tribunal judgment.

Farm seizures are blamed for plunging Zimbabwe into severe food shortages after the government displaced established white commercial farmers and replaced them with either incompetent or inadequately funded black farmers. ZimOnline.