REDRESS/AMANI the defendant is a resident (an incola) and the plaintiff is a non-resident (a perigrinus) the defendant can apply for an order that the plaintiff furnishes security for costs. Where the plaintiff is a resident and the defendant is not, and the cause of action arose within Zimbabwe, the High Court will have jurisdiction if there has been an attachment of the defendant’s property or person to found jurisdiction. If both parties are non-residents (perigrini) there would need to be an additional jurisdictional fact as well.216 B. Legal Action Against a Foreign State The general rule is that foreign States are immune from the jurisdiction of Zimbabwe courts, but this is restrictive or partial immunity and not absolute immunity, that is, it does not apply to commercial matters or where the immunity has been waived.217 C. Practice No case is known in which a claim has been brought in Zimbabwe against an individual or a foreign State for damages in relation to torture or ill treatment committed outside of the country. VII. CONCLUSION For the last few years Zimbabwe civil society and international NGOs have played a central role in documenting and publicising nationally and internationally the ongoing gross and systematic human rights violations. They have also analysed the reasons for the violations and the fundamental structural and other weaknesses in the legal system, the body politic and the institutions of Government and administration generally, and they have proposed solutions and reforms. The current crisis itself in part grew out of civil society’s efforts to galvanize Zimbabweans into challenging Zanu-PF’s abuse of the Constitution.218 While the current political impasse continues there appears to be little prospect of breaking the cycle of human rights violations, and even when it is eventually broken, there will be an urgent need for radical reforms in many areas. One institution which requires specific attention is the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP). More will be needed than rebuilding the professionalism and reversing the ‘Zanunisation’ of the ZRP. The fact is that the ZRP, as did the pre-Independence police force from which it developed, has always routinely resorted to brutality and torture to a greater or lesser extent in the course of ordinary policing, and not only during the maintenance of ‘law and order’ at critical political stages in the country’s history, such as at present. Until and unless this problem is acknowledged and resolutely challenged, the scourge of torture and other violations at the hands of 216 In delict it might be that medical expenses were incurred in Zimbabwe, or future loss of earnings, even though the cause of action arose outside of the country. As to which system of private international law (choice of law) would be applied it would probably be lex loci delicti. CF Forsyth, Private International Law, 3 rd Ed., Juta & Co 1996, p. 316. 217 Barker McCormac v Government of Kenya 1983 (2) ZLR 72 (S). 218 From the mid-90s civil society organisations began to work with the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) to campaign for a new Constitution which would entrench human rights and curtail presidential power. Out of this alliance grew the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA), to oppose the Government’s Constitutional Referendum, and later the MDC itself. 43