The Constitutional Court will have to determine the legal status of a farm on the outskirts of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, in order to decide the appropriate process and compensation for its potential compulsory acquisition by the state.
The farm in question, owned by Mr. Alistair Michael Fletcher, was originally classified as rural agricultural land. However, in 1999 it was incorporated into the Bulawayo City Council area through Statutory Instrument 212 of 1999, raising the question of whether it should now be considered urban land.
This distinction is crucial, as the Constitution outlines different processes and compensation procedures for the state's compulsory acquisition of rural agricultural land versus urban land. For rural land, the owner is only entitled to compensation for the value of improvements, without the underlying land. But for urban land, the owner must receive the combined value of both the land and improvements, which is generally much higher.
In 2000, the state issued a compulsory acquisition order for Mr. Fletcher's farm and placed caveats preventing him from using, holding or transferring the land. Mr. Fletcher challenged this in the courts, but two years ago the Supreme Court ruled that the High Court lacked jurisdiction to hear his application to have the caveats lifted.
Mr. Fletcher has now been granted leave by the Constitutional Court to appeal that Supreme Court decision. The Constitutional Court judges acknowledged that the lower courts had misinterpreted and misapplied the relevant constitutional provisions regarding compulsory land acquisition.
Crucially, the judges noted that the lower courts had failed to properly consider the impact of the farm's incorporation into the Bulawayo City Council in 1999 - a change that could be pivotal in determining whether the land should be classified as rural or urban for the purposes of acquisition and compensation.
Given the important constitutional issues at stake and the reasonable prospects of success in Mr. Fletcher's appeal, the Constitutional Court determined that it was in the interests of justice to grant him leave to challenge the previous rulings before the full bench of the court.
