The Culture of Human Rights in Zimbabwe and Its Relevance to the Constitutional Debate
THE 1998 LAW SOCIETY OF ZIMBABWE SUMMER SCHOOL
Introduction
The phrase “culture of human rights” evokes many different meanings in different people. One person’s definition of “culture” will differ very greatly from another person’s definition. Likewise the term “human rights” on its own is usually interpreted subjectively. What one person may view as a human right may be viewed by another as a crime.
Culture is defined in my dictionary as “a type of civilisation”, a “refinement”. Civilisation is defined as an “advancement beyond the primitive, savage state,” a state marked by a sophisticated, self-controlled, fair and enlightened environment. However one has a problem too with the word “civilisation” as it means many different things to many different people. For example Thomas Carlisle, wrote, in the nineteenth century, that: “the three great elements of modern civilisation are gunpowder, printing and the Protestant religion”.
The civilisation propounded by Carlisle has not exactly had the positive effect in creating a human rights culture in the world in the twentieth century; a century which has seen some of these elements used to promote ideologies profoundly adverse to a human rights culture. In sum it is very difficult to find common ground as to what we mean by a culture of human rights.
It will be obvious that there is a need to agree on what we all mean by a “culture of human rights” if we are to debate this topic effectively. What then could be an objective definition of a culture of human rights? Religious people, be they Christians, Moslems or Hindus, or whatever, would argue that there is, in the words of the late Richard Turner, “a transcendent morality which determines what a human rights culture is”. Richard Turner in his book “The eye of the needle” wrote: