discrimination in schools. The only publication that emerged from any government organ was the report of the ZRP mentioned earlier, and this was a wholly unsatisfactory account of the Food Riots. The failure of the government to address the concerns of either the UN Committee or civic society demonstrates the kind of impunity that is imposed when its human rights record is questioned. Fifthly, there is no evidence that any investigations took place in the police and army into either their management of this crisis, or the behaviour of their members. The report published by the ZRP is mostly laudatory about the police’s management, and can only be seen as a whitewash of their incompetence in dealing humanely with civilian unrest. The same can be said for the army, although there has been no public report from the army on this matter. Sixthly, there remains the issue of the damages. As was seen above, the cases mounted by the Human Rights Forum were mostly successful, and provide the strongest evidence in support of all their allegations. However, it is obvious that civil remedies are a poor substitute for a full and detailed inquiry into an event such as the Food Riots. Civil remedies are beyond the resources of most Zimbabwean citizens, and indeed, in the context of such a massive disturbance as the Food Riots, beyond the resources of civil society. So there is a clear problem of access to justice here, just as there has been in the years after the Food Riots. Furthermore, damages awarded in a climate of economic hyperinflation are clearly problematic. As shown above, there were significant differences between the amounts claimed and the amounts awarded, significant losses due to inflation, and dramatic differences between the awards for those shot and those tortured. By the time that most victims received their damages, the value of the damages had been wholly eroded by inflation. There are two issues to be raised here in respect of the damages, whilst acknowledging that the hands of the courts in respect of the award of damages are tied by legislation. The first point is that the scale of damages in a hyperinflationary economic climate can result in derisory awards being granted, and the whole notion of the penalty incurred through damages is lost. If the State delays both in the time taken to resolve a matter, and then further delays in payment, the consequence is that no penalty is incurred at all: a million dollars claimed in 1998, which turns out to be Z$500,000 dollars awarded in 2003 and then paid in 2004, amounts to very little penalty in the end. The second point relates to the difference between accidental injuries due to reckless shootings and deliberate assaults and torture. As noted earlier, the contumely due to deliberate infliction of harm must surely be different from that occasioned by accidental injury. This difference would be removed if torture were a criminal offence in Zimbabwean law, but this has yet to happen, despite the request by Parliament to the President that the UN Convention Against Torture be signed and ratified. There is a consistent avoidance by the government of any attempt to criminalise torture, and rather a consistent trend towards impunity, as exemplified in the General Amnesty of 2000. Finally, it seems evident that civilian society must have considerable apprehension at the present time when civic bodies and political parties have the kinds of dissatisfaction with the policies of the government that were evident in 1998. The response of the State in 1998 was out of all proportion to the threat, and, even if there were some threats to public order, these could not be contained without violating the principle of minimum harm. The apprehension must be even greater in the wake of the past five years, when the security forces have been continuously implicated in the commission of gross human rights violations,27 and in the context where no group outside government has 27 Here see Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, Are They Accountable?: Examining Alleged Violators and Their Violations pre and post the Presidential Election March 2002 (Harare: Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, 2002); Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, Torture by State Agents in Zimbabwe: January 2001 to August 2002 (Harare: Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, 2003). 22