JUSTICE IN ZIMBABWE 72 ____________________________________________________________________ administrative authorities were acting illegally by failing to hold Council elections in accordance with the law. By holding that Stevenson lacked legal standing, the court avoided a decision on the politically sensitive issue of whether or not elections should be held in Harare. This had very far-reaching consequences. If the court had ordered the holding of Council elections within 60 days of giving its judgment, and if that decision had been upheld by the Supreme Court, (as it would have been), the government would surely have been obliged to hold the Harare council elections during 2001 and would not have been able to cause so much confusion by finally holding these elections simultaneously with the Presidential elections in 2002. The Supreme Court decision in the Stevenson case (Stevenson v Minister of Local Government and National Housing & Ors 125) Stevenson appealed against the High Court’s ruling that she had no legal standing to bring the application. The majority of the court (Sandura JA and Ebrahim JA) found that the High Court decision was wrong and that the applicant did have legal standing to bring the application. Sandura JA started by noting that to have legal standing to bring legal proceedings a party must have a direct and substantial interest in the matter and that it must appear from the application that the applicant has such an interest. He further noted that in her founding affidavit the applicant averred as her very first point that she was a resident of Harare and a registered voter in Harare. He then decided as follows: “Because the appellant specified other grounds in addition to the one set out above, the learned judge … declined to hear her application on the ground that she had badly formulated the issue of locus standi. I have no doubt in my mind that the learned judge erred in this regard. I say so because, in reply to a question put to him by the learned judge, counsel for the appellant … made it quite clear that the appellant had brought the