Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum Special Report Enforcing the Rule of Law in Zimbabwe CHAPTER 4 ENFORCING THE RULE OF LAW: THE JUDICIARY Zimbabwe’s judiciary is tiny. As at September 2001, it comprised eight judges of the Supreme Court, a High Court bench of 19 (after three resignations), and a Labour Tribunal of four judges. The magistracy falls under the Public Services Commission, not the Judicial Services Commission. Our judiciary has had a very rough ride in the new millenium. The reasons are purely political and relate to the result of the Constitutional referendum, the outcome of the June 2000 Parliamentary elections, and the land question.1 As yet, however, there are only a few questionmarks hanging over the professionalism and integrity of our judges, despite strenuous attempts by the executive to politicise the judiciary. Godfrey Chidyausiku, then Judge President of the High Court, has asserted that the land controversy is ‘a minefield for the judiciary. I only hope it does not become the graveyard for the judiciary.’2 In a speech suggesting that he spoke on behalf of Government, he located the origins of the controversy over land between the judiciary and the executive in the then Chief Justice Gubbay’s address opening the 1991 legal year. Later publicly reprimanded by the Chief Justice with the full support of the Supreme Court bench, Justice Chidyausiku was reportedly required to ‘avoid making inflammatory statements’ on the land issue.3 But that was before he was appointed Chief Justice by the State President. Most judges have hitherto failed to facilitate the executive’s desires. Some have already paid with their jobs, including the former Chief Justice, Anthony Gubbay. Repeated international protests about political interference with our judiciary have apparently been ignored, including protests from the United Nations, the International Commission of Jurists, the International Bar Association, the Association of Commonwealth Lawyers,4 lawyers within the SADC region, and even the Confederation of South African Trades Unions (COSATU). Virtually every local organisation of any note has also called for the restoration of the rule of law. ‘The rule of law is fundamental to economic and social stability in the region and it is indivisible. We believe it to be accurate to say that the legal system in Zimbabwe is at extreme risk’, the chair of South Africa’s The land issue was re-politicised despite one Zanu-PF MP’s plea, after Margaret Dongo’s revelations in 1999 about its allocation to the politically well-connected with few farming qualifications, ‘let us not continue to make the land question a political football’ (Parliamentary Debates 26,11:505). Very early in the run-up to the referendum, the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association (ZNLWVA) threatened to disrupt the poll if the draft constitution was not first amended to make land and social security benefits constitutional rights for its members. After the referendum, they invaded white-owned farms. The land invasions reportedly caused dissent within ZanuPF, but were consistently supported in public by the State President. The independent press noted that presidential endorsement of the farm invasions was merely the latest in a history of government and presidential actions abrogating the rule of law, tore into the police for failing to uphold the rule of law in order to please their political masters, and called for the removal of the Mugabe government in the election. 2 The Herald 12.1.01. 3 The Financial Gazette 18.1.01. 4 Which relocated its September 2000 conference from Harare. 1 38