According to Newsweek, President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe is being sued by white farmers who are demanding compensation for the seizure of their lands.

In 2000, Mugabe's government put a land reform program in place that saw militias seizing the land of white farmers by force.

"We say no to whites owning our land, and they should go," Mugabe said, reflecting on the program years later. He recently has promised to get rid of the few white farmers who remain in the country.

Mugabe, at a rally in Harare, Zimbabwe just a week ago, also made it very clear that he has no intention of prosecuting the people who killed white farmers during the government-sanctioned property seizure. 

“Yes, we have those who were killed when they resisted. We will never prosecute those who killed them. I ask, why should we arrest them?” Mugabe said.

Critics of Mugabe's actions say that his purge has caused a deal of economic and agricultural issues to occur.

Many Western donors have cut ties to Zimbabwe and foreign governments have imposed sanctions on Mugabe's government.

And many of the black citizens who received land that once belonged to white farmers found their crops failing, as they tried to plant with limited to no agricultural training.

The two of these things together have been blamed for the country's economic troubles, which led to a single loaf of bread being worth 10 million Zimbabwean dollars in 2009.

That same year, in order to try to get the economy under control, the government replaced its money with bond notes. The problem with these is that they have no value outside of the country.

All of this came to a head this weekend, when a group of white Zimbabwean farmers filed legal action against Mugabe's administration.

A spokesman for the group and a former farmer whose property was burned down during the seizure, Ben Freeth, said that "dispossessed Zimbabwean farmers have been wronged.”

Freeth added that the farmers want to take their fight to the president because he and members of his administration have been operating above the law for too long.

“Unless the culture of impunity stops, no investment will take place in our country and the economic crisis will deepen. Without property rights and the rule of law, our negative trajectory as a failed state will accelerate."

In order to ensure they receive an unbiased trial, the farmers have filed through the Southern African Development Community (SADC), a group made up of several African nations, including Zimbabwe. 

A 2008 SADC decision kept white farmer Mike Campbell on his land after the Mugabe government tried to evict him. The same decision ruled that Zimbabwe had to compensate farmers from whom it had seized land.

The Mugabe administration rejected the SADC's decision; Campbell died a few years later. His widow claimed the farmer's death stemmed from injuries sustained after Campbell was beaten by Mugabe supporters upset about the SADC decision.

David Conolly, a white farmer forced off of his land in 2015 hopes that this time things will end differently for those involved in the SADC case.

“All I want to do is to be allowed to farm our family farm and live in my home,” Conolly said. “If the Zimbabwe government doesn’t want to allow me to do this then it must pay fair compensation for the loss of my farm and my life’s work.”