Four judges of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Tribunal have said the decision by the SADC summit to ‘dissolve’ the tribunal was illegal and in bad faith, notes a Business Day report. It says in a scathing letter to SADC’s executive secretary, the judges said a ‘close reading’ of the communiqué from the SADC summit of heads of state last month in fact showed ‘beyond doubt’ that the tribunal had not just been suspended but ‘also dissolved altogether’. The decision was a ‘drastic action taken on political grounds’ – to avoid having to take action against Zimbabwe for refusing to enforce the tribunal’s judgments, they said. According to the report, the tribunal came under intense pressure after it gave judgments against the government of Zimbabwe on its land redistribution process. Zimbabwe refused to enforce the tribunal’s orders and challenged its legality. In their letter, the judges said the original decision to suspend the operation of the tribunal applied only to new cases. But last month’s communiqué ‘reiterated’ a moratorium on the tribunal hearing both new and pending cases. These were ‘weasel words’, the judges wrote. What the communiqué actually amounted to was a dissolution of the tribunal.
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