Zimonline
HARARE – Too many of Zimbabwe’s judges and magistrates have benefited from the government’s political largesse that the bench could not be deemed independent, local human rights lawyers and activists said yesterday. The lawyers and activists were reacting to a statement by Judge President Paddington Garwe, when he opened Zimbabwe’s legal year yesterday that the bench was independent and not subservient to President Robert Mugabe and his ruling ZANU PF party. Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) executive director Arnold Tsunga, said the general consensus among the legal fraternity in the country was that the judiciary was compromised both at the personal level of individual judges and at the institutional level. “Let’s look at conditions of employment of the judiciary. The judges and magistrates are mired in poverty, the Judge President mentioned it. The conditions of service are not attractive to the extent that it will be difficult for them to have personal independence when they are economically compromised,” said Tsunga. Tsunga – whose ZHLR has taken Mugabe’s government to the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights (ACHPR) accusing it of violating human rights, undermining the judiciary and the rule of law – said judges had compromised themselves by accepting land controversially seized from whites. Some of Zimbabwe’s judges such as Justices Ben Hlatshwayo and Chinembiri Bhunu allegedly personally invaded farms while several other judicial officers were also allocated land by Mugabe’s government. Tsunga said: “A number (of judicial officers) have accepted farms which are contested. These farms have not come as written perks (in their contracts of
employment) but as discretion perks by politicians.
“When judges and magistrates are being given and accept discretion perks because of poverty, surely their personal independence is compromised as well. Institutionally, they are also compromised because the operating environment is providing them with serious challenges. Judges are given political cases to handle by politicians bent on settling personal scores.” Top human rights lawyer and the faction-riddled opposition Movement for Democratic Change party’s spokesman on legal affairs David Coltart said the bench’s failure to deal expeditiously with political cases had also cast doubt on its independence and professionalism. Coltart said: “The problem with this judiciary is that it is not seen as independent because of what happened in the last five years in terms of failure to deal with certain political cases expeditiously.” He was referring to the courts’ failure to finalise several petitions by MDC candidates against victory by ZANU PF candidates during elections in the past five years including the petition by the opposition party’s leader Morgan Tsvangirai against Mugabe’s re-election in 2002. Although election petitions are dealt with as urgent, the High Court has over the last three years failed to conclude Tsvangirai’s petition forcing the MDC leader to appeal last year to the Supreme Court, the country’s highest court of law. Officially opening the 2006 legal year, Garwe defended Zimbabwe’s judiciary as independent and professional and challenged critics of the bench to come out in the open and point out their specific grievances to judicial authorities. Zimbabwe’s bench – reconstituted over the last five years after Mugabe purged independent judges – has been criticised by both local and international rights groups for failure to defend the rights of ordinary citizens and opposition activists in the face of increasing repression by the government.