Expropriation Without Compensation – have South Africa’s citizens merely dodged the bullet?
13 December 2021
History repeats itself – with vicious, chilling accuracy. Just under twenty years ago, the Zimbabwean justice system seemed to have prevailed over a frothing-at-the-mouth late President Robert Mugabe who had lost a number of court battles against the besieged white commercial farmers.
Just like South Africa’s Joint Constitutional Review Committee (Joint CRC), both Zimbabwe’s Constitutional Commission (1998) and Constitutional Parliamentary Committee (2009) had conducted extensive public hearings in all ten provinces of Zimbabwe. “The sole purpose of these extensive public engagements was to get public inputs on” Zimbabwe’s ideal constitutional framework. I was involved at the highest level as rapporteur for both process – an incredible feat in retrospect.
However, unlike South Africa’s process that focused on one provision, being section 25 of the Constitution, Zimbabwe’s process was extensive and global. The sad irony is that eventually, only one section really mattered in 2013. We Zimbabwean liberals and opposition political parties had failed to convince Mugabe to reverse his suicidal Fast Track Land Reform Program (FLRP). Unlike South Africa’s more progressive justice system, Mugabe ensured legislation that prevented victims of property rights violation from even approaching the courts.
In analysing the constitutional provisions of property rights, we, like South Africa, took note of what Mugabe’s toxic propaganda system termed ‘historical injustices’ of unequal and skewed ownership of land in the country. Mugabe’s Constitutional Amendment No. 17 of 2005 cared very little of tenure for the five hundred thousand farmworkers or farm tenants.