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.”
