In 2008, white farmers whose farms where expropriated without compensation during land invasions in Zimbabwe, approached the SADC Tribunal to seek recourse.

After a five-year legal battle, “the property was auctioned because the Zimbabwean government failed to honor cost orders of South Africa’s High Court, Supreme Court of Appeal and the Constitutional Court”, he said.

The money raised from the auction will be used to pay legal costs as well other creditors, he said.

The property was auctioned in terms of a landmark legal ruling by the North Gauteng High Court in 2010.

A property owned by Zimbabwe’s government in South Africa has been sold to compensate white farmers evicted from their land in Zimbabwe.

At the height of the land grabs, led by veterans of the 1970s liberation war and encouraged by the state, Mugabe said it was immoral for white farmers to occupy 70 percent of the best farmland while majority blacks were crowded on to barren plots.

“The order was registered in the High Court in Pretoria and AfriForum’s lawyers‚ for the first time in March 2010‚ attached the property in Cape Town following the enforcement order granted then”.

Worldwide legal history will be made at 10am today when the first sale in execution of Zimbabwean property in South Africa takes place in Cape Town, civil rights group, AfriForum said.

“What we have now is an worldwide human rights ruling that’s being enforced against the perpetrator, which is quite a strong message to send out and a strong way of exposing that things are not right in Zimbabwe, things need to be corrected and that what has happened so far was illegal and had to be rectified”, said Spies.

The auction was attended by more than a dozen people and was conducted in the road outside the property. He said his embassy would urge Harare to react swiftly to the “crisis”.

AfriForum is also assisting dispossessed Zimbabwean farmers in a separate lawsuit against President Jacob Zuma and the ministers of justice and global relations.

The auction of the house, which went for 3.76 million rand ($282,000), was the final step in a complicated case that has been fought through the South African courts for years by a group of Zimbabwean farmers.

A house in Kenilworth, Cape Town, owned by the Zimbabwean government.