Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum Special Report Enforcing the Rule of Law in Zimbabwe Chapter 3. These two related to the creation of the Supreme Court, and were not detrimental to citizens’ interests. However, during the first Parliament, MPs did change the rules of citizenship without debate. The provision for dual citizenship was removed from the Constitution, which incorporates the Citizenship Act. The Speaker’s curtailing of debate on the Citizenship Amendment Bill by the elected representatives of the people was later repeated with other controversial bills, including the University of Zimbabwe Amendment Bill in 1990. The pattern, in cases of controversial new legislation, has been to prevent Parliamentarians from performing their defined function in a democratic system. Between 1985 and 2000, in the second, third and fourth Parliaments, Zanu-PF did hold at least two-thirds of the seats. It was during this period that major changes were made to the Declaration of Rights, diminishing previously-protected rights of citizens. Hanging as a method of capital punishment and the whipping of juveniles were both approved by our Zanu-PF Parliament. They were also happy for people sentenced to death to remain on death row indefinitely. They repeatedly removed property protections from the Constitution. Practically every time the judiciary made a judgment unpalatable to the executive, Parliament changed the Constitution. Although in strict terms this was legal, it was not ‘reasonably justifiable in a modern democracy’, because it sacrificed the long-term interests of the citizens to the short-term political desires of the executive. Such behaviour did not accord with ‘the rule of law’, even if it was legal in the sense that it did not break the law. It did breach the intention of the Constitution to protect our democratic and other human rights. Most of Parliament’s important functional breaches relate to the role and powers of the executive, especially the Presidency. Parliament has given its approval, by amending the Constitution, to an executive presidency; to protecting presidential prerogatives from court challenge; to the State President appointing 12 Members of Parliament and eight Provincial Governors.1 Under our current Constitution, one man (or woman) appoints 20 MPs to our Parliament. Six million adult Zimbabweans elect 120! Clearly, this is not equality before the law as understood by ‘the rule of law’ and as specified in our Constitution and Electoral Act. The respective ratios between electors and electees are 1:20 compared to 50 000:1.2 To put it differently, one State President has the same electoral power as one million ordinary Zimbabweans! When white voters were rightly deprived of a similarly-loaded differential franchise in 1987, their 20 seats were effectively transferred to the State President – by those elected to Parliament to protect and advance our interests as equal citizens. Turning to specific laws, Zimbabwe inherited from the settler colonial regime a particularly vicious piece of undemocratic legislation. It was originally passed in 1960 to crush political dissent from disenfranchised indigenous Zimbabweans. It is called the Law and Order (Maintenance) Act (LOMA). Many black politicians were jailed under it. Many publications were suppressed by it. Many human rights were breached by it as a law as well as in its 1 In addition, 10 chiefs are elected indirectly by the College of Chiefs. In the June 2000 election, the average number of voters per constituency was 42 082, within a permissible range of 33 666 – 50 498 (The 2000 Delimitation Commission Report, page 4). 2 7