JUSTICE IN ZIMBABWE 69 ____________________________________________________________________ has been affected by the administrative action automatically has standing to bring an action without proof of injury. 124 However, the Urban Councils Act was not enacted in the special interests of the voters in a particular local authority area but instead in the broader constitutional and public interest. The narrower interest of ratepayers is amply catered for under the special principle relating to ratepayers. On behalf of supporters of her political party: The applicant claimed that as the Member of Parliament for one of the constituencies within the Harare local authority area she had a right to make the application. Her party had won all the parliamentary seats within Harare and would be likely to win most if not all of the Harare local council seats when the council elections were held. She therefore argued that she had the right to represent the interests of the majority of people in Harare who would be registered voters in council elections. The applicant’s political party was contesting the Harare Council elections and the party would have been able to bring the application in its own name. However, the applicant had not produced any proof that her political party had given her a mandate to bring this action on its behalf. A Member of Parliament does not, by virtue of that office, have legal standing to bring an action on behalf of the people in her constituency and to represent their interests in such litigation. She had not proved that she was legally entitled to bring a representative action on behalf of the Harare residents. She had not shown that the residents had given her a mandate to represent them. She had also not sought to bring a claim in terms of the Class Actions Act that would have required her to apply for leave from the High Court to institute a class action on behalf of the residents of Harare. As she had sought to bring the application on behalf of the residents of Harare without first securing their consent, she had attempted “to bring faceless and voiceless parties into the proceedings and substituting her own views and prejudices for theirs, and, what is worse, without revealing her own personal interest in the matter.”