5.3.3 The prosecution service The Attorney-General and officers in the Attorney-General’s office have been subjected to political influence and pressure by members of the ruling party. As an ex officio but nonvoting member of Cabinet the Attorney-General is vulnerable to pressure by fellow members of Cabinet. In recent years there has been a widespread perception that decisions whether to institute prosecutions have been taken on a political basis, with prosecutions often not being pursued against supporters of the ruling party. This has added to the public feeling that there is selective justice in Zimbabwe. Prosecutors have come under enormous pressure to act in a politically partisan fashion, especially in smaller, rural based courts. They have been verbally abused and, in some cases, have even been physically threatened or attacked if they attempted to bring prosecutions against ruling party supporters. More recently, a prosecutor who had sought to charge Joseph Mwale (a ZANU (PF) supporter, member of the police and apparently state security operative) in accordance with a long standing High Court order for the murder of an MDC official, is now facing prosecution himself. The charges against this prosecutor are extremely suspect given their timing and the sequence of events which led up to them. Furthermore, in many instances, the constitutional power of the Attorney-General’s Office is completely negated by the refusal of the Zimbabwe Republic Police to follow instructions and make arrests. 5.3.4 The judiciary The Zimbabwean Government maintains that it was obliged to reconstitute the judiciary to rid it of colonial, reactionary elements that were obstructing reforms aimed at advancing the rights of the black majority, especially its “programme” of land redistribution. The new judicial officers, it said, would be sympathetic to reform programmes and would facilitate rather than obstruct their implementation. In actuality, the Government’s main aim was to remould the judicial system into a pliant instrument of State power that would not stand in the way of the government’s drastic curtailment of organised political opposition and clamp down on criticism and dissent. The independence of the judiciary has been severely compromised as a result. The Mugabe administration and the “war veterans” waged a vitriolic and physically threatening campaign to get rid of judges who were perceived as being likely to pass judgments adverse to governmental objectives. They forced the early retirement of Chief Justice Gubbay and plied pressure on other judges to resign. President Mugabe then proceeded to appoint new judges, all of whom had close connections to the ruling party and most of whom received farms at 13