REDRESS/AMANI not only on the clarity and width of its remit but on the commitment of the Government to genuinely support such an organ. Creating such a body (and other human rights organs) through legislation should not be particularly irksome or even controversial, but if they then become sinecures for political cronies, they will be nothing but a waste of money. This is what has happened with the office of the Ombudsman which, if it is not abolished altogether, needs to be entirely overhauled. In addition, to be effective and impartial such institutions must have the political and financial support and cooperation of the Government without political interference from it. In a democracy these independent bodies are accountable to parliament and not to the executive. The future protection of human rights and in particular the implementation of effective remedies for victims of violations, will necessitate the creation of new bodies as well as the strengthening and rebuilding of existing machinery. The country’s economic collapse, widespread corruption, emigration of skilled officials, public service demoralization, and the abandonment of the rule of law, have all gravely undermined the administration of justice in recent years. This has created tremendous practical problems which will need to be tackled in parallel with the introduction of new innovative mechanisms such as a HRC, police complaints body and so on. The role of civil society should be to participate vigorously in all the necessary processes of assessment and consultation preceding the creation of these, and to keep them firmly on the agenda. A lot can be learned from regional and international developments in regard to institutional safeguards to help prevent the recurrence of human rights violations. Some scholars in the field of reparation for victims of gross and systematic human rights violations have argued that judicial fora and the law ought not to necessarily dominate discussions for reparation in the context of political transition. The widely-used term ‘transitional justice’ is so clearly part of actual political processes that reparation can be considered partly as a matter of politics, 220 and calls are made for a more socio-political approach to the problem of finding measures to deal with large numbers of victims – measures which other countries have found do not simply or easily fit into traditional court procedures. Dealing with past abuses undoubtedly requires multi-faceted, combined, holistic or hybrid solutions, some of which this paper has sought to examine. While recognizing, therefore, that law reform in itself is only part of what will be needed, it should still be of particular concern to civil society. An obvious issue is the startling lack of confluence between aspects of Zimbabwe’s domestic law and developments in the international arena. To a considerable extent this specialized topic calls for input from both local and outside experts. A stark example is that one of the most widespread of human rights abuses, namely torture, is not even a criminal offence per se in Zimbabwe. For years civil society has been calling upon the Zanu-PF Government to sign and ratify the 1984 UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and its refusal to do so for over two decades speaks volumes on the nature of the Mugabe regime in general and its successive Ministers of Justice in particular. Civil society must make it an urgent priority for Government not only to make Zimbabwe a party to the Convention but thereafter to speedily bring domestic 220 A helpful publication which develops these ideas is the Expert Seminar on Reparation for Victims of Gross and Systematic Human Rights Violations in the Context of Political Transitions (Universiteit Antwerpen and Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 2002). 45