By Basildon Peta
On Wednesday the Zimbabwe High Court nullified eviction orders served on 54 white farmers as President Robert Mugabe ruled out any possibility of talks with the white landowners, telling them that they had no rights to control property in Zimbabwe.
The beleaguered white farmers have appealed for a meeting with Mugabe to discuss the seizures of their farms but Mugabe told state radio that there was "no room for talks" between him and the white farmers. He said the rights of the white farmers to own land in Zimbabwe were secondary to those of blacks.
"There is no room for talks, there is no room for negotiations because the real owners of this land are asserting their rights and reclaiming their land," Mugabe told a gathering in the southeastern town of Chiredzi.
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'You cannot decide what you will have in our country' "If you (whites) want to live with us, to farm alongside us, we, the rightful owners of our ancestral land, will carve out some land for you. But you cannot decide what you will have in our country," he said.
High Court Judge Justice Benjamin Paradza nullified eviction orders served on the 54 white farmers saying they had been wrongly served under Mugabe's land seizure laws.
Lawyer Jeremy Callow, who represented the farmers, told journalists that new eviction orders would have to be prepared and issued if the farms were still to be confiscated for the resettlement of black peasants.
"We will have to wait and see what action the government wishes to take. If they wish to lawfully acquire the farms at issue, they must follow their own laws," he said.
Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa last week urged new black settlers to ignore court challenges and move on to targeted farms to begin preparations ahead of the rainy season, which normally starts in October.
Chinamasa had conceded that some of the orders served on 2 900 white farmers asked to vacate their farms by August 8 had been wrongly issued.
Police arrested nearly 250 farmers of the 1 800 who defied the orders to leave their land by the August 8 deadline.
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