Human Rights Archive Zimbabwe

The Lancaster House Agreement was a political consensus which brought the independence of Zimbabwe from Rhodesian rule. The agreement came into being after a series of negotiations between the nationalist parties and the Rhodesian Front between September and December 1979. The Agreement was facilitated by the British and the American governments to bring to an end the 14 year war in Rhodesia between the Rhodesians and the guerrilla movements.

The constitution of a country is a set of rules that define the nature and extent of the country’s government. It is sometimes referred to as the country’s fundamental or basic law, and has supremacy over all other laws.

The preamble to a constitution is an introduction to the constitution and usually bears the formal heading “Preamble”. It presents the history behind the constitution’s enactment, and sometimes sets out the nation’s core principles and values.

Founding Principles of the Constitution can be described as: “those values that citizens commit themselves to their adherence. They are the foundations of the Constitution and they reflect the manner in which the people desire to be governed.”

Our current Constitution states that public officers owe a duty to everyone in Zimbabwe to observe and uphold the rule of law [section 18(1a)], and the “Kariba Draft” Constitution contains a similar provision.Fundamentally it means that people’s rights and obligations must be determined by laws rather than by individuals or groups of individuals exercising an arbitrary discretion.

Citizens form the basis of every independent State because a State is an abstract concept comprising the people who live within a defined area. Of the people who constitute a State it is the citizens who have a right to determine who will govern them and, sometimes, to decide the form which their government should take.

The purpose of a Declaration or Bill of Rights is to protect the rights of citizens and ordinary people living in the country. Although generally these rights must not be overridden by the government, some have to be qualified.

Here, when we refer to “social, economic and cultural rights” [“SEC rights”] we mean second-generation rights as well as any third-generation rights which are capable of being defined reasonably clearly.

In essence, the doctrine of separation of powers is that for a free and democratic society to exist there must be a clear separation between the three branches of government, namely: The Executive,The Legislature and The Judicial Branch.

The Executive, the branch of government headed by the President, is currently the most powerful of the three branches. The President and his Ministers control the Defence Forces, the Police and the civil administration; they represent the country in its dealings with foreign governments; and generally they are responsible for running the day-to-day affairs of the country. The Executive is the branch of government which impinges most frequently on the lives of ordinary people.

The legislative branch of government is the branch which makes laws for the country. A legislature embodies the idea that people are the source of political power in the State and should control the law-making process.

The judiciary is one of the three main branches of government, the other two being the Legislature (i.e. Parliament) and the Executive (the President, Ministers, the Public Service, the Police and Defence Forces). The judiciary consists of all judicial officers, namely, the people such as judges and magistrates who decide civil and criminal cases in courts.

The disciplined services – the Defence Forces (consisting of the Army and the Air Force), the Police Force and the Prison Service – are the subject of separate parts of the present Constitution.