In South Africa: Zimbabwean Govt.'s property auctioned

The house came with a swimming pool and electric fence round its perimeter, and has a Zimbabwean tenant.

A residential property in Cape Town owned by the Zimbabwean Government was auctioned for 281,500 dollars on Monday, in a symbolic victory against the land grab policies of President Robert Mugabe.

The house came with a swimming pool and electric fence round its perimeter, and has a Zimbabwean tenant.

Willie Spies, a lawyer to the white Zimbabwean farmers, said that it is a significant symbolic victory to any person that has lost everything, to see that at least in neighbouring countries justice does prevail.

In 2008, a tribunal set up by the South African Development Community bloc ruled that Zimbabwe had wrongly taken land from a group of white farmers.

Harare rejected the ruling but a South African court ordered that it could be applied in the country and that the property could be sold.

Spies also said the auction meant future losses proven in other international tribunals could be enforced in South Africa.

He said the money raised from the auction would be used to pay legal costs as well other creditors.

Spies said more than two dozen people attended the auction, conducted in the road outside the property.

Meanwhile, a Zimbabwean official at the house who declined to give his name said he has nothing to say on the issue.

Government officials in Harare also declined to comment.