Constitution Watch 3/2019 Security Forces: Still no Independent Public Complaints Mechanism
7 February 2019
enforcement agencies – the Police, the Judiciary (the courts) and the Executive (the
government). The public must be confident that all these agencies will perform their
roles in law enforcement efficiently and impartially.
In regard to trust, none of these agencies shows up very well:
• The Police are regarded by many members of the public as politically biased.
This was implicitly acknowledged by the Motlanthe Commission when it
recommended that “the Police should be further trained to be professional and
non-partisan”. If the Police had been anxious to improve their public image, they
could have set up their own complaints body without waiting for the government
to establish one. Legislation is not needed, so long as the Police are prepared
voluntarily to accept oversight by a non-statutory body.
• The courts’ reputation has not been enhanced by recent arrests and allegations
of corruption on the part of magistrates and prosecutors. In the matter of section
210 of the Constitution, the extraordinary delay on the part of the Constitutional
Court in giving judgment in a clear-cut but important case does not enhance the
Court’s standing as one of the pillars of the Constitution.
• The Executive is primarily responsible for establishing one or more independent
complaints mechanisms under section 210 of the Constitution. It has failed to do
so for almost six years. That does not suggest a great concern for
constitutionalism.
The Police and Defence Forces themselves have admitted that they have “bad
apples” and “criminal elements” among their members. A proper complaints
mechanism would help them weed out members whose misconduct tarnishes the
reputation of the rest, and would give us security services of which all patriotic
Zimbabweans can be proud. Establishing such a mechanism might also assist the
government in engaging with the international community.
Conclusion
There is a crying need for the Police and the other security services to be more
accountable and responsive to the public. Establishing one or more independent
complaints mechanisms is an important way to achieve this. That is why section
210 of the Constitution was enacted.
Nearly 2 000 days have passed since the Constitution was enacted. If the
government had started drawing up a Bill to implement section 210 of the
Constitution and its legal drafters had written just one word each day, there would
be a perfectly adequate Bill ready to put before Parliament.
Just over 1 120 days have elapsed since the Constitutional Court heard the
application brought by Veritas to compel the Government to implement section 210.
If a judge had written just one word of a judgment every day since then, there would
now be a perfectly respectable judgment ready to be issued by the Court.
Instead there is nothing. The cries of the victims go unheard