President Jacob Zuma, on a state visit to Britain, reviews a guard of honour at Horse Guards Parade. He wants US and EU sanctions on President Mugabe's regime to be lifted
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 'It has never been so bad': Zimbabwean human rights lawyers under attack
Lawyers for Morgan Tsvangirai’s office have a list of 184 people, including a boy of 3, who were murdered during the run-off presidential elections in June 2008 that ended with Robert Mugabe having himself declared the winner.
Alongside the names of the dead is a column of those who have been identified as perpetrators by witnesses. Not one of these killings, all carried out by people serving President Mugabe, or one of thousands of cases of torture, rape, arson and looting against supporters of Mr Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), have been investigated or prosecuted.
Instead, the Attorney-General’s office and police are prosecuting on fabricated charges 26 MDC MPs who were trying to stay alive in the storm of savagery around them.
At the same time, President Zuma of South Africa meets Gordon Brown today during his three-day state visit to Britain to discuss lifting the travel bans and asset freezes imposed by the European Union and the United States on Mugabe and other members of his Zanu (PF) party.
Yet a year after the inauguration of the coalition Government between Mugabe and Tsvangirai, the Prime Minister — which committed itself to “justice, the rule of law and respect for human rights” — the administration of justice, led by the Attorney-General’s office, is embarked on an onslaught of malicious harassment of opponents of Zanu (PF). Human rights lawyers are as much a target as are prosecutors, magistrates and court staff for the merest deviance from party zealotry.
The evidence against Zimbabwe’s judges and prosecutors — with notable exceptions — for taking orders from Zanu (PF) has been inescapable over the past decade, but, says Beatrice Mtetwa, the celebrated Zimbabwean human rights lawyer, “it has never been as bad as it is now.”
Apparently alarmed that the new power-sharing Government would stop violent farm invasions, Johannes Tomana, the Attorney-General, with the chief magistrate and the Justice Ministry permanent secretary, went on a countrywide tour early last year with directives to district law officers, police and government officials for “quicker prosecution” of white farmers fighting to stay on their land. They were told that titledeeds were worthless and all white farmers, by being on their land, were effectively guilty of illegal occupation. Under a paragraph headed “lawyers tactics”, the directive warned: “Another trick is to refer to case law. Watch out.”
By then the Attorney-General’s office was using a weapon of disturbing vindictiveness. Zimbabwean law gives prosecutors seven days to lodge an appeal against a bail order — during which time the accused stays in custody. So far 145 MDC civic activists have been forced to spend a week in jail. Only four appeals have been filed and each summarily dismissed.
The most prominent of the MDC parliamentarians to be prosecuted, and given the seven-day treatment repeatedly, is Roy Bennett, one of Mr Tsvangirai’s closest lieutenants, arrested on charges of banditry a day before he was due to be sworn in as a deputy minister. He is now into the fourth month of his trial.
The only evidence against is from a supposed state witness, Michael Hitschmann, and it was repudiated in 2006 for being obtained under torture. When Hitschmann’s lawyer, Mordecai Mahlangu, advised the Attorney-General’s office that his client had no evidence to give against Bennett, he was arrested for obstruction of justice and held overnight in foul police cells.
The same happened to a leading solicitor, Alec Muchadehama, for asking a judge’s clerk to process a judge’s release order for a group of MDC officials kidnapped by the secret police. For good measure the clerk was arrested as well, and jailed for a week under the bail provisions. During the clerk’s trial, a senior prosecutor, Andrew Kumire, was given five days in jail for contempt for his vulgar protest at the magistrate’s decision to dismiss charges. He walked from court unhindered by police and was granted bail by the magistrate’s superior. The junior magistrate resigned in protest and Kumire was promoted.
“The effect of this is that it’s difficult even to get a stamp from court officials on papers for an urgent application,” said Irene Petras, the director of Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights. “You won’t get any co-operation after hours. They are too scared.”
Muchadehama’s trial dragged on for six months as the State switched the charges three times. He was finally acquitted after the magistrate ruled there was no prima facie evidence against him. In Mahlangu’s case, the magistrate said that “writing a letter from one lawyer to another does not constitute an offence”. Again, charges were dismissed. Ordinary magistrates, unlike more senior judges, Petras says, “are still willing to make professional decisions”.
Contempt of court violations have become “so outrageous, even judicial officers cannot ignore them”, she says. “But the procedure is so slow, the executive can do anything and nothing will happen.”
The decay is good news for friends of Zanu (PF). A former deputy minister was accused of $150,000 graft in 2003, but the trial sat in abeyance until last year when the Attorney-General’s office revived it, and then declined to prosecute. The same happened to a party loyalist running a hospital and accused in 2008 of stealing 15,000 litres of state fuel, and a wealthy white businessman caught last October with US$250,000 of gold. In each case the decision not to proceed ran counter to overwhelming evidence, according to the court documents.
The coalition Government is due to hold elections, after a referendum on a new constitution, sometime after 2012.
“If we are going into an election, we have to look at what happened in 2008,” Petras warns. “None of the perpetrators were prosecuted.” It is vital, she says, that institutions such as the Attorney-General and the judiciary, are functioning professionally and with integrity. “If you don’t have these institutions, you are not going to have an election that brings a different result.”
(2010-03-04 / The Times)
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