JUSTICE IN ZIMBABWE 70 ____________________________________________________________________ The court remarked that the concern of the court in the present case was to ensure that potentially viable public causes were not frittered away in frivolous, furtive, unfocused or self-serving private litigation. The legal standing requirement seeks to ensure that the action is brought by the best-qualified person to bring that action, as “unqualified” litigants are more likely to bring weak or half-baked actions. The judge pointed out that there was no shortage of potential “qualified” litigants who could have brought this action. They included ▪ any residents’ association in Harare or even a neighbourhood committee; ▪ any political party intending to contest the local government election could have brought the action in its own name; ▪ an action could have been brought under the Class Actions Act. In the result, the judge dismissed the application on the ground of the applicant’s lack of standing. Comments on judgment It took considerable ingenuity on the part of the judge in this case to find that the applicant lacked legal standing in this case. It was quite remarkable that he was able to find that the litigant fell outside every single one of the many possible bases for legal standing he referred to in his judgment. The fact that the pleadings might have been badly drawn and were somewhat contradictory did not prevent the court from allowing the case to proceed if it was obvious that any one of the recognised grounds for standing still applied. When applicant’s counsel was asked by the court at the hearing on what basis his client was suing, he responded that applicant was suing in her personal capacity. It should have been obvious that she had legal standing on this basis alone. The very first statement in the applicant’s affidavit clearly spelt out that she was a resident and registered voter in Harare. Yet the judge said it was not enough for her to state simply that she was a resident and registered voter. She was obliged to allege in her founding affidavit that she had a direct, personal interest and that she had suffered