CHAPTER 3 GOVERNANCE “My Government will work towards ensuring that the pillars of the State assuring democracy in our land are strengthened and respected. […] At the end of the day, whatever we do or choose not to do must be intended to benefit all our people.” - President Emmerson Mnangagwa, Inauguration speech at the National Sports Stadium on 24 November 2017. Good governance is key to a culture of human rights respect. Human rights as a culture and practice emanates from accountability and fidelity to the rule of law, and this culture has a lot to do with how governance is done. Broadly, issues of government structuring and institutions, accountability and transparency, the legal framework and alignment of laws and structures to the Constitution, devolution and constitutionalism come to the fore. new Parliament. Among those falling under constitutional alignment and devolution were the Constitutional Court Bill, Customary Law and Local Courts Bill, High Court Amendment Bill, Traditional Leaders Amendment Bill, Rural District Councils Bill, Provincial and Metropolitan Councils Bill and the Public Finance Management Amendment Bill. As at the end of 2018, none of these Bills had been completed and passed. This meant the devolution agenda, for instance, was yet to have a statutory framework. Veritas, a local legal think tank, identified omissions from the legislative agenda, including security legislation such as the Defence Act, Police Act and the Prisons and Correctional Services Act – all of which need further alignment to the Constitution. Legal Reform Post the 2013 Constitution, the Inter-Ministerial Task Force on Legislative Alignment (IMT) which was created and housed within the Ministry of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs to spearhead the legislative alignment process identified a total of 206 statutes as requiring alignment. The legislative alignment process has been ongoing since 2013. For the most part, the government has engaged in technical and piecemeal as opposed to substantive alignment. This has brought into question government’s commitment to usher-in genuine reform to the governance and human rights legal framework in the country. Although the government denies it, there have been significant delays in aligning legislation to the Constitution. In an interview in 2017, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, Mrs Virginia Mabhiza, stated that there were no delays and a mere plus or minus 30 Acts remained outstanding .4 The government purported to amend 125 Acts through the General Laws Amendment Act. Some new Acts were passed. However, ssignificant areas of alignment remained untouched. During President Mnangagwa’s State of the Nation Address to Parliament in September 2018, he outlined the Government’s legislative agenda for the next year – the Bills that Government would present to Parliament and expected to be passed during the 12-months-long First Session of the Public Trust of Public Institutions and Freedom To Voice Opinions Public trust in government institutions was rather shaky. Afrobarometer tracked Zimbabweans’ perceptions of the police force right from when they first started conducting surveys in 1999 up until just before the 2018 elections. While the data did not capture public sentiment after 1 August 2018, Afrobarometer found that only 41% of people felt free to criticize the police in the post-November 2017 phase. In contrast, only 25% of people felt free to criticize the army, and only 35% of people felt free to criticize President Mnangagwa. Public trust in the three 4. “No delays in aligning laws: Mabhiza”, The independent, 25 August 2017, https://www.theindependent.co.zw/2017/08/25/nodelay-aligning-laws-mabhiza/ 14 STATE OF HUMAN RIGHTS REPORT ZIMBABWE 2018