Zimbabwe court to rule in November on land seizures

HARARE, Zimbabwe (Reuters) -- Zimbabwe's Supreme Court will rule in November on an application by white farmers challenging President Robert Mugabe's power to take their land without compensation, officials said on Wednesday.

It also decided late on Tuesday that farmers whose properties have already been seized under the government's fast-track land resettlement program should be given 90 days' notice to vacate their premises.

A spokesman for the mainly white, 4,500-member Commercial Farmers Union said Tuesday's ruling offered a reprieve for farmers who had already been issued with 30-day eviction orders.

"The 90-day period is designed so that confirmation has to be acquired from the courts before farmers have to leave their properties," he told Reuters.

The court's decisions were made on the same day that a white farmer was badly hurt during a confrontation with war veterans demanding that he stop working on his tobacco plantation.

A dozen self-styled war veterans occupying the Perveral Farm in Karoi, 200 kilometers (124 miles) north of Harare, attacked owner Marshall Roper after he and his laborers resisted demands that they stop work, a spokesman for a local farm group said. Roper's face was slashed by a machete.

The Supreme Court has set November 6 for hearing the CFU's challenge against Mugabe's powers to seize their farms with no obligation to pay for the land if former colonial power Britain does not provide the funding.

Mugabe's government has sanctioned hundreds of farm invasions since February by veterans of the 1970s liberation war against white rule.

It has also served notice to acquire more than 2,000 of the 3,041 white-owned farms earmarked for resettlement under controversial legislation that absolves the government from compensation.

The government has started resettling people on 211 farms acquired without contest and said last month it plans to resettle peasants on at least 800 farms before the start of the rainy season in October.

But last week the government began evicting some of the illegal settlers, targeting those who occupied land after the launch in July of its resettlement scheme.

Farm industry officials say agricultural production has fallen sharply this year due to work stoppages forced by the invaders. Agriculture accounts for about 20 percent of Zimbabwe's gross domestic product.

At least 31 people -- mainly opposition supporters and five white farmers -- were killed during the farm invasions and a wave of violence across Zimbabwe before parliamentary elections narrowly won by Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF party.

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