The High Court has quashed a Refugee Appeals Tribunal decision refusing refugee status to an anonymised Zimbabwean applicant, finding that the tribunal made a fundamental factual error about a farm near Bindura.
In a judgment delivered on 11 June 2009, Ms Justice M. H. Clark ruled that correspondence from Zimbabwe’s Commercial Farmers’ Union did not support the tribunal’s statement that “a Reed Farm did not exist”. The union’s replies said the farm at the location described was owned by William (Bill) Reed and was known as Matloui Farm.
The applicant’s asylum claim centred on events at the farm, where her husband worked. She said supporters of Zimbabwe’s ruling Zanu-PF party attacked the farm, took her husband away and later threatened her. She said another farmer, identified in the judgment as Mr Peterson, helped her leave Zimbabwe. These were the applicant’s account of events, not findings that the court made about what happened.
The Refugee Appeals Tribunal had affirmed an earlier negative recommendation by the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner. It cited several reasons for rejecting the applicant’s credibility, including inconsistencies about political affiliation, why the youths would return to the farm, and her ability to contact her husband or the pastor caring for her son. It also treated the farm-name issue as undermining her account.
The applicant sought judicial review, arguing that the tribunal had misunderstood the union’s correspondence and that the error went to the heart of its decision. The respondents submitted that the farm was called Matloui, not Reed Farm, and that other credibility concerns independently supported the outcome.
The High Court accepted that there were other negative credibility findings but held that the farm was the core of the applicant’s account. The court said the mistaken conclusion about the farm had the potential to destabilise the assessment built on it. It found the error sufficiently fundamental to satisfy the sole ground on which leave for judicial review had been granted.
The court quashed the tribunal’s decision of 10 September 2007. The judgment does not grant refugee status or determine the asylum claim; it sets aside the tribunal decision. The judgment separately notes that the daughter’s negative decision had been challenged in other judicial review proceedings that settled, and that she was awaiting a fresh oral hearing.