SK (Zimbabwe) v Secretary of State for the Home Office 19 June 2012 – read judgment
This case raises the interesting question whether someone who was involved as a member of the ruling Zimbabwe Zanu PF party with farm invasions can be eligible for refugee status. The answer is a definite no: the High Court held that the Upper Tribunal had been entirely correct in finding that a Zimbabwean national, who had beaten farm workers in farm invasions intended to drive farmers and farm workers away from their farms, had committed inhumane acts amounting to crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute art.7(1)(k) and therefore by virtue of the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees 1951 (United Nations) art.1F(a) was excluded from refugee status.
Background Facts
The appellant was a Zimbabwean asylum seeker. She had been actively involved with Zanu PF mobs in two farm invasions, shortly after which she was raped by another member of the youth militia. It was this rape which had led to her leaving Zimbabwe for England, after eleven months in the militia.

The Zimbabwe Exiles Forum is a Southern African non-political, non-profit and non-partisan organisation with an eye on the future of Zimbabwe. It was founded in 2003 in South Africa on the premise that political change that will usher in a democratic dispensation where human dignity and civil liberties are sacrosanct in Zimbabwe is inevitable. 