Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum INTRODUCTION This is the first in the series of Special Reports issued by the Research Unit of the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum. It displaced the original proposal to deal with gender and constitutional issues. This change was necessitated by the wave of lawlessness which resulted in massive human rights abuses during most of 2000. These abuses were reflected in the political violence which started just before the Constitutional Referendum in February and continued for months after the June elections. As most independent media commentators have indicated, they originated in the abrogation of the rule of law by Zimbabwe’s executive. Article 21 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights notes that: ‘(1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his [sic] country, directly or through freely chosen representatives. (2) Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his [sic] country. (3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.’ As the NDI i has noted, ‘[t]he exercise of the right to democratic elections cannot be realised without the exercise of related fundamental human rights [also recognised in the UDHR], including the right to freedoms of opinion, expression (including to seek, receive and impart information), association, assembly, movement, equality before the law and due process of law (including equal protection of the law and to an effective remedy for violations of rights), as well as to life, liberty and security of the person (UDHR Article 19). These rights are not only applicable in Zimbabwe through international obligations; they are applicable directly through the Constitution of Zimbabwe (Articles 11-26, The Declaration of Rights).’ This report therefore attempts to examine all of the facets of the human rights abuses during the electoral period, not merely the election violence itself, which has been extensively reported elsewhere. The electoral period starts with the Referendum on the draft constitutional proposals, and works through the Parliamentary elections to the first by-election held in late November. In the Referendum in February 2000, a majority of Zimbabweans who voted rejected the Government’s constitutional proposals. The abuse of human rights started in the week before voting, and increased in intensity in the run-up to the general elections in June 2000. The process of constitutional reform was only temporarily halted by the Referendum, despite Government sulking over the result. The constitutional problems, especially regarding the powers of the executive presidency and the abuse of executive power, have not been resolved. Pressure is again building from civil society to address them. Constitutional reform must resume and remains vitally important for human rights in Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe’s existing Constitution was inherited from the decolonisation process and has already been amended 16 times. Many of these amendments strengthened the Executive (particularly by creating the Executive Presidency and recurrently extending its powers), in ways that altered its earlier relationship to the legislature and judiciary and endangered basic political rights. The draft constitution proposed to strengthen the executive presidency still further. It is widely believed that those provisions were responsible for the rejection of the whole draft. 5