Institutional reforms Often countries coming out of an authoritarian past need to adopt institutional, legal and policy reforms that will enable the country to achieve the long-term social, economic and political objectives that are essential to preventing civic and/or democratic collapse in the future. Such reforms generally have, as their aim, the elimination of the conditions that led to and maintained prior conflict or repression. There are many ways of dealing with the problem including removing abusers from public positions, creating new institutions to protect human rights, dismantling or restructuring institutions prone to abuse, implementing human rights training and professionalisation policies and programmes and introducing legal and constitutional amendments to enhance good governance and better protect human rights. In Zimbabwe, the police and military have in many ways played a partisan political role. Recently, 'the heads and other senior members of both the police and army have made public statements committing the loyalty of the security forces to the ruling party and denouncing the opposition MDC as violent, treasonous and the enemy of the State'. Partisan policing, selective prosecution, the non-enforcement of court orders and so on, have all contributed to the declining legitimacy of the country's criminal justice system. In addition, the integrity and independence of the judiciary is increasingly questioned. In this regard, it is also increasingly apparent that Zimbabwe's judicial system has been deeply compromised. Developing a clearer picture of exactly what has transpired will in turn provide a more realistic understanding of what actions (in terms of training, lustration, policy development, etc.) need to be taken in order to rectify the situation. Most transitional situations are constrained by a fundamental lack of detailed information in this regard. The above background motivated the strong arguments for institutional reforms. It was pointed out that the writing of a new constitution should set the tone for institutional reforms in the country. Against the background of violence in the country and the politicization and militarisation of public institutions, people had lost confidence and trust in the institutions of the state. Participants noted that the government had reduced the boundary between the government and the party to a point where it became difficult to see the differences. This led to the excessive abuse of government institutions and corruption. 28