The Supreme Court and the High Court started their six-week Christmas “court vacation” on December 1. The vacation will end when the first court term of 2013 begins on January 14.
During the vacation no appeals, trials or contested court applications will be heard, but duty judges will be available at all times to deal with urgent matters and chamber applications. Since December 1, High Court Judge-President Chiweshe sitting in chambers dealt with the latest episode in the Kunonga/ Anglican Church case, and in the Supreme Court a chamber application has been heard for bail for accused persons in the Glen View murder case.
The Judicial Service Commission has announced that since it took over the administration of the judicial service in 2010, it has succeeded in reactivating 37 magistrates circuit courts. These courts had been shut down in 2008 owing to lack of resources and essential staff. All 50 prescribed circuit courts are now operational. Circuit court arrangements permit resident magistrates to hold court periodically in remote areas, eliminating the expense and inconvenience involved in witnesses and police having to travel long distances for court hearings.
In accordance with previous long-standing practice, the Attorney General, his three Deputies and 15 State Counsel Grades I and II have been gazetted as Justices of the Peace, giving them powers to have disturbers of the peace arrested. Under the Criminal Procedure and Evidence Act they also have power to issue arrest warrants, search warrants and warrants for further detention of arrested persons. – Veritas
Council employee gets 10 years for theft
Local magistrate, Kudakwashe Canady, has given a 26-year-old woman employed by the Gweru City Council as a cashier a 10 year jail term for defrauding the local authority of more than $30, 000.
Prosecutor Bornwell Balamanja said Conillia Madzamba receipted money from ratepayers in a manual receipt book in 2009 but failed to post the transaction in a computer to facilitate banking of the money.
Between 12 June and 19 November 19, Madzamba received varying amounts from ratepayers and receipted them using receipt books during power outages.
Instead of posting the manual receipts into the computer she converted the money to her own use.
The offence was discovered on 20 November 2009 by a senior accountant, Mercy Saungweme, and a report was made to the police leading to the arrest of Madzamba.
Two years of her sentence were suspended for five years on condition of good behaviour while four more were put aside on condition that she repays council all the money.
Meanwhile, Council Chamber Secretary, Richard Masinire, is on suspension for alleged corruption, while several other councillors and Mayor Teddious Chimombe have also been fingered for corrupt activities. – Brenna Matendere
The Farai Maguwu Case
Farai Maguwu is the director of the Centre for Research and Development, a Zimbabwean advocacy group well-known for its documentation of human rights abuses in the Marange diamond field. In September 2011 he went to Harare International Airport en route to a Human Rights Defenders conference in Ireland.
After checking in for his flight and passing through immigration formalities, he was intercepted by a man and a woman in civilian dress who refused to identify themselves, but later turned out to be CIO agents. Without giving reasons, they searched his person and luggage, and without providing any warrant of seizure or inventory, seized and retained his boarding pass and certain items of property, including laptop, wallet, $2,000 and camera.
Forced to abandon his flight, Maguwu reported the incident to the police and made an urgent application to the High Court to recover his property. He was granted a provisional order for the return of his property pending the hearing of an application for a final order to declare the seizure unlawful and to compel the disclosure of the identities of the two CIO agents. The provisional order was directed to, among others, Minister Sekeramayi, the Minister of State for State Security, under whose authority the CIO falls.
The property was not returned and the Minister opposed Maguwu’s application for a final order. He disputed Mr Maguwu’s claims as to what had been confiscated [denying taking of the valuables], claimed that his department had received intelligence information that Maguwu was going to Ireland to “subvert the government of Zimbabwe” and claimed there was nothing legally wrong in any of the actions taken by his agents.
Justice Mathonsi rejected the Minister’s evidence that Mr Maguwu’s laptop and other valuables had not been seized, declared the seizure of all his property by the State agents “wrongful, unlawful and unjustified” and ordered its return. “Zimbabwe is a democratic country which subscribes to the law … State security is undeniably paramount, but what is done in pursuit of State security must be justifiable in a democratic society and must conform to the rule of law,” said Mathonsi. One of the disputed issues in the Roadmap to Elections is the MDC-T’s demand for the enactment of an Act of Parliament to regulate the CIO and subject it to Parliamentary oversight.
The COPAC draft constitution does not make such an Act essential, but says there must be either an Act or a Presidential or Cabinet directive or order establishing the CIO; and also that the CIO “must be non-partisan, national in character, patriotic, professional and subordinate to the civilian authority”. – Veritas
By election battle continues
In August 2009 three sitting MPs lost their House of Assembly seats after their expulsion from the party [then MDC-M] on whose ticket they had been elected in the 2008 general election.
Under the Constitution and the Electoral Act, the President should have promptly called by-elections to fill the vacancies. But, as with the many other Parliamentary vacancies that have arisen since July 2008, no by-elections were called.
In mid-2010 the three former MPs, wanting to seek re-election in their former constituencies, applied to the High Court for an order compelling the President to call by-elections. Despite the President’s opposition, Justice Ndou granted an order in October 2011 directing the President to gazette dates for all three by-elections within 14 days. The President appealed to the Supreme Court.
In July 2012, the Supreme Court rejected the President’s arguments and dismissed the appeal, but altered the High Court order’s out-of-date 2011 deadline and gave the President until the end of August 2012 to act. Under the altered High Court order the President was “ordered to publish in the Gazette a notice ordering new elections to fill the vacancies as soon as possible but by no later than 30 August 2012”.
The Supreme Court said its reasons for its decision would be handed down later, but they have still not been released.
At the end of August, just before the Supreme Court’s deadline expired, the President applied to the High Court for an order extending to the 1st October “the period within which to comply with” the deadline set by the Supreme Court. Bhebhe and his fellow would-be MPs consented to this being done, and the extension was granted by Justice Chiweshe.
At the end of September the President applied to the High Court for another extension, this time to March 31, 2013. Despite spirited opposition from Bhebhe and his colleagues, Justice Chiweshe, on granted the President’s application.
Bhebhe, Mguni and Mpofu have appealed to the Supreme Court, but the hearing cannot take place until after January 14. – Veritas
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