6 organisations under control through the establishment of a “Human Rights Commission” 3. Judging from pronouncements from the Minister of Justice, Legal and Parlimentary Affairs, the intention is that all complaints on human rights issues must, by law, be through a government appointed Human Rights Commission and that only Human Rights organizations registered through a government appointed board will be permitted to make such complaints. The process may be intended to prevent complaints to the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights (which complaints have recently4 embarrassed the Zimbabwean government) before “exhausting domestic remedies”.5 The Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs has frequently claimed that the human rights organizations are fabricating false reports of human rights abuses. He has maintained that they are doing this at the instigation of hostile foreign governments who fund them. Addressing the UN Human Rights Council the Minister repeated this line and called upon the Council to stop direct funding by developed countries of human rights nongovernmental organizations in developing countries. It is clear that the Government will appoint to this Commission government supporters whose main task will be to cover up human rights abuses by government agencies. In the context of continuing economic collapse and mismanagement, particularly of agriculture, it should be noted that only about 300 whites remain farming. Some reportedly carry out farming by “leasing” the land, effectively paying a portion of the profits of the farming as protection money from those who have been allocated the land by the Zimbabwean government. The extensive flurry of court applications (and consequent defiance of court orders) when the land “reform” process was at its height has thus abated. Coupled with new legislation effectively nationalizing all farm land and a constitutional amendment ousting the jurisdiction of the courts to consider the legality of acquisitions, some government officials have proclaimed that the “reform” process is now complete. Accordingly, the relative absence of political protest is not indicative of government progress towards the benchmarks, but rather of a government that has attained its objectives and has achieved almost total control over a cowed populace. Its policies are now largely aimed at managing the socio-economic fallout of its actions not, as the now notorious Operation 3 4 5 Government previously sought to regulate Human Rights NGOs through a NGO Bill, which was not signed into law by President Zimbabwe after international protest and local protest, not least by the Governor of the Reserve Bank who pointed out the loss of desperately needed foreign exchange which might result from the effective banning of foreign funded NGOs. This Bill would have prohibited human rights and governance non-governmental organisations from receiving foreign funding. See Zimbabwe Lawyers For Human Rights Press Release at http://www.zlhr.org.zw/media/releases/zlhr_ihrda.htm Zimbabwe: Storm Over Rights Commission Africa Reports available at http://iwpr.net/?p=acr&s=f&o=321771&apc_state=heniacr200606 accessed 14/10/06 and see NANGO Online The Human Rights Commission at http://www.nango.org.zw/news/view.asp?id=236 Zimbabwe’s Failure to meet the Benchmarks in the Contonou Agreement