On paper, political parties are free to regulate their affairs as they deem fit and go about their business as they please, within the confines of the law of course. Also, theoretically, the State may not interfere in the running of political parties or unduly restrict their operations. This, sadly, has not been the case in Zimbabwe. The State has used various laws to interfere with the operation and activities of opposition political parties in the name of maintaining law and order. Since shortly after independence the ZANU (PF) government has used laws such as the repealed Law and Order (Maintenance) Act, the Public Order and Security Act (POSA), the repealed Miscellaneous Offences Act, and the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act to interfere with and disrupt the activities of opposition parties, some of the notable ones being the old Zimbabwe African People’s Union (Patriotic Front) (PF-ZAPU), the Zimbabwe Unity Movement (ZUM) and the MDC. The above ties in with Masunungure’s observation that it does not follow that political systems which require party registration are of necessity more authoritarian and therefore less democratic than where such registration is not required. He says that “[t]he absence of requirements for party registration may actually mask the existence of even more insidious legislation that suffocate or stifle the operations of the ‘free-to-exist’ political parties. People can form political parties as and when they wish, but then the operating environment can be so hostile as to enfeeble such political organisations”. Therefore, political parties can be freely formed but are not as free to operate53. There remains a possibility that in future, political parties may be required to register if they are to exist and operate lawfully. There already has been some discussion around this. For instance, the former Electoral Supervisory Commission at some point lamented that the absence of laws for the registration of political parties had led to the emergence of ‘fly-by-night’ political parties. The Commission also felt that the registration of political parties would be in the interest of national security as the State could use the information availed through registration to carry out investigations to ascertain the party’s intentions and to ‘weed out potential saboteurs’. It therefore recommended that to curb this tendency, political parties should be formally registered54. While this proposal might have appealed to ZANU (PF) as the ruling party at the time, the opposition, especially the MDC, were against the introduction of a law which requires the registration of political parties. Their argument was 53 54 Ibid, p.8. Ibid, p.1. 21