No rule of law, despite the unity government

In a report released last weekend, a coalition of legal groups, including the Bar Human Rights Committee and the General Council of the Bar in the UK, said that rule of law issues in Zimbabwe have not improved since the unity government was formed last year.

A place in the sun: report on the state of the rule of law in Zimbabwe after the Global Political Agreement was the result of a tour of the country in late October last year by international legal and human rights experts. The tour coincided with the deportation of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Manfred Nowak, who was barred from entering the country when he arrived at Harare International Airport. That incident sparked widespread anger and Nowak himself said that there were clearly parts of the government who did not want him to assess “the current conditions of torture”

The tour also coincided with Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirais temporarydisengagement from the coalition government last year over Robert Mugabes refusal to honour the GPA, which was signed in 2008 to pave the way for critical change in the country. Such change has not happened and rule of law issues remain a major concern for human rights defenders across the country.

The lawyers report said that incidents of extra-judicial killings, kidnapping, torture and other serious human rights abuses continue to occur, abuses that remain un-investigated by the authorities. The culture of impunity on the part of the police and the state security forces also remains unchanged, while the majority of the senior judiciary remains fundamentally compromised by state patronage, grants of land and other gifts given to them by the former government.

The report also detailed how the physical infrastructure for the teaching of law is crumbling, stating that the mission saw for itself the dilapidated state of the Law Faculty of the University of Zimbabwe. The mission was reportedly also deeply disturbed by accounts it received that the Central Intelligence Organisation had infiltrated the student body in the Law Faculty, with the result that the content of lectures and open debate in seminars was circumscribed by fear of the consequences of candour.

The lawyers groups highlighted a major concern, that access to justice remains virtually non existent.

The legal aid system is so starved of funds that the Legal Aid Directorate is itself on the verge of collapse. Although small numbers of cases are taken on by certain independent organizations, the picture as regards access to justice, is grim, the report reads.

The mission concluded that there has been no improvement, and quite possibly a further decline in the rule of law since the signing of the GPA, and that significant concern remains in relation to all aspects of the rule of law in Zimbabwe. The report calls for the immediate end to impunity and the investigation of the involvement of the state security forces in disregarding the law.

The mission also calls on the government to comply with its obligations under the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Treaty, and honour the rulings of the SADC Tribunal. The government has refused to abide by rulings of the Tribunal, which recently ruled that Mugabes land reform programme was unlawful. Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa has dismissed the SADC Tribunal rulings as null and void. SADC meanwhile has taken no action to force Zimbabwe to comply.