Judgment No. CCZ 12/2015 19 Const. Application No. 79/14 The adoption of the approach of testing the actions of the applicant against a set of factors as an objective standard, is necessitated by the elasticity and relativity of the concept of public interest which is an abstract notion. It is also necessitated by the fact that there can be a natural suspicion that the notion of acting in the public interest may be invoked as a smokescreen to garner support for something that actually is in the applicant’s own interest. The factors to be considered do not only help the court to decide whether the action taken is genuinely in the public interest as to meet the requirements of s 85(1)(d) of the Constitution; they are important for the protection of judicial process against abuse for private interest. As was observed in Stevenson v Minister of Local Government & Ors 2001(1)ZLR 321(H) the factors ensure that “potentially viable public causes are not frittered away in frivolous, furtive, unfocused or self-serving private litigation”, disguised as public interest The factors relate to the key issues that a person facing the challenge of justifying the proceedings instituted as being in the public interest needs to address. The judicial process is invoked for the purposes of achieving constitutional objectives. The court must be careful not to risk the credibility of its process by unwittingly associating its jurisdiction with proceedings that have nothing to do with the objectives of public interest litigation. Section 85(1)(d) of the Constitution guarantees standing to a person who institutes judicial proceedings seeking to achieve the objectives for which the remedy of acting in the public interest was designed. It is in the context of seeking to ensure that public interest litigation is used for its intended purpose and to prevent s 85(1)(d) procedure being abused by busybodies, merely meddlesome people for oblique motives unrelated to vindication of public interest, that courts developed factors that any person genuinely acting in the public interest has to satisfy. State of Uttaranchal v Chaufal & Ors, AIR (2010) SC 2550.