VERITAS
STATUTES REQUIRING CONSTITUTIONAL ALIGNMENT
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Note: Acts marked with an asterisk (*) were purportedly aligned to the Constitution
by the General Laws Amendment Act, 2016 (No. 3 of 2016) or by the Criminal Procedure and Evidence Amendment Act, 2016 (No. 2 of 2016). The extent of their alignment was only partial at best, as the following list shows.
1. Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act [Chapter 10:27]*
The Act should be repealed or, at the very least amended:
•
To guarantee and facilitate access to information; some sections unnecessarily
restrict access to information. “Excluded information”, to which access cannot be obtained, includes:
o information about how the President exercised his discretionary powers (section 4 and First Schedule to the Act);
o parliamentary records protected by parliamentary privilege (ditto);
Also, individuals who are neither citizens nor permanently resident, and unregistered media organisations, have no right to information under the Act (section 5(3)).
•
To remove the restrictions on foreigners participating in the production of local newspapers and other media. Under section 65 of the Act, foreigners cannot be mass media owners in Zimbabwe, and under section 79(3) journalists
cannot be accredited, save for short periods, unless they are citizens or permanent residents of Zimbabwe. The restrictions stifle investment in the media
and violate freedom of expression – a right which is enjoyed by foreigners as
well as Zimbabweans.
•
To remove the restrictions on the activities of journalists who are not accredited under the Act. Under sections 78(4) and 79(7) of the Act unaccredited
journalists cannot be employed on a full-time basis by media publishers and
news agencies, and this unjustifiably restricts the scope of their work, thereby
violating their own freedom of expression and that of their employers.
•
To abolish the criminal offence of abuse of journalistic privilege (section 80).
At the very least, journalists charged under the section should be given a defence of “reasonable publication” if they rely in good faith on information
provided by sources which they have no real reason to believe to be unreliable.
The defence should be available if it was reasonable for a person in the position of the defendant journalist to have published the material in the manner
and form he or she did.
2. Acquisition of Farm Equipment or Material Act [Chapter 18:23]
The Act should be amended to ensure that “fair and adequate” compensation is paid
for farm equipment seized under the Act, as provided in section 71(3)(c)(ii) of the
Constitution. The Act merely provides for farm equipment to be valued by govern-