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Zimbabwe treats more than 1,500 typhoid cases
(AFP) – 2 hours
ago
HARARE — Zimbabwe is reporting up to 50 cases of typhoid per day and
has treated more than 1,500 people in an outbreak blamed on poor water and
sanitation facilities, the health minister said Tuesday.
"By the end
of December 2011, more than 1,500 cases had been seen and treated," Henry
Madzorera told a news conference in the capital Harare.
"An average of 30
to 50 cases are reported on a daily basis."
The bacterial disease is
transmitted by contaminated food and water. Since the current outbreak
started last October, 350 suspected cases and 16 confirmations were reported
in the first three weeks of this year. No deaths have been reported up to
now.
"The progressive deterioration of public health infrastructure have
seen such rare diseases like typhoid becoming more commonly encountered
within our population," Madzorera said, in reference to water and sewerage
pipes.
"The same poor water and sanitation conditions in Harare prevail
in most of our urban areas and other parts of the country."
Madzorera
appealed to his government for funds to "refurbish the water, sanitation and
sewerage infrastructure as a matter of urgency", after years of neglect
during the country's recent economic crisis.
Last week Finance Minister
Tendai Biti announced the country will use $40 million (31 million euros)
from IMF support to refurbish water and sanitation facilities.
Some
suburbs go for weeks without running water as Zimbabwean municipalities
battle to keep up services.
Harare city authorities said they can't
supply water to all the city's residents. Dams and water treatment
facilities date back to before Zimbabwe's 1980 independence and cannot
sustain demands from the ever-increasing population in the
capital.
Last October, over 6,000 cases of diarrhoea were reported in the
southern towns of Masvingo and Kadoma when at least seven children
died.
Four years ago over 4,000 people died of cholera in an outbreak
which affected nearly 100,000 people.
Harare official Tendai Mahachi told reporters on Tuesday
well-to-do suburbs will get water about twice weekly. He said "the wealthy
can afford to buy water" and cope with outages.
At least 900 cases of
the bacterial disease have been treated this year in poor western suburbs of
Harare, many having had no piped water for months and even years.
No
deaths have been reported in the typhoid outbreak blamed on food
contaminated by faeces from broken sewers during water shortages.
A
cholera outbreak in 2009 blamed on the collapse of water, sanitation and
prevention services killed more than 4000 people.
Zimbabwe’s public sector workers have agreed to end the
strike action they started last week and return to work on Wednesday, after
a deal was struck with government to increase transport and housing
allowances by US$58 per month.
No salary increases were secured by
the Apex Council representing civil servants. But it was agreed that a small
committee of both workers and government representatives would be created,
to track revenue flowing into the national treasury.
Richard Gundani,
secretary general of Zimbabwe Teachers Association (Zimta), explained that
although no agreement was signed, the ‘tracking’ exercise would be good for
accountability.
“Tracking revenue is an important activity that will
enhance transparency. The information will be useful to Zimbabweans in
general,” Gundani said.
He added that the combined total of US$58 in
allowances was far from the US$288 per month salary increment they were
demanding, but they would continue their efforts by appealing to the Prime
Minister.
“We realize this is not enough. It is far from being adequate
but we believe there is so much stress out there. Public sector workers are
in dire straits so it was prudent that we take this meanwhile,” Gundani
said.
The workers have for years been demanding salaries in line with the
basic requirements set by government itself: the poverty datum line. Public
sector workers currently earn a minimum of US$250 per month, which amounts
to less than half the US$538 required monthly for a family of
four.
Insisting there is no money for wages and revenue from diamonds was
uncertain, government last week offered what amounted to a US$7 increase per
month, which infuriated the workers. The Progressive Teachers Union of
Zimbabwe (PTUZ) described it as an insult, pointing to the fact that
legislators had recently demanded and received US$15,000 in allowances that
had not been paid.
Gundani said government on Tuesday availed US$240
million which will be used to increase the allowances. He explained that the
revenue that is to be tracked by the new committee will be money going into
the national treasury, especially funds from the mining sector.
ZIMBABWE UNIONS APPEAL
TO POLITICAL LEADERS IN PAY DEADLOCK
Public servants' unions in Zimbabwe
said Tuesday they would ask leaders of the country's power-sharing
government to intervene in their ongoing strike to double basic
wages.
Tendai Chikowore, spokeswoman for the "apex council" comprising
leaders from four government workers' unions, told journalists that
officials came to the bargaining table Tuesday with the same $240-million
blanket offer unions already rejected six days ago.
"The resource
envelope availed by the government totalling $240
million, which was
tabled last week and presented again today, is inadequate and therefore
rejected," she said.
"This effectively means basic salary will not rise,
hence our basis for no settlement on the package. Apex council will urgently
appeal to the principals of the government of the national
unity."
Zimbabwe's economy has begun recovering after a decade-long
downturn, following a power-sharing agreement by long-time rivals President
Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai in the wake of failed
2008 polls.
Government workers staged a stay-away protest last week
demanding a $538 minimum monthly salary, up from their current
$200.
The government's offer, if spread among the 230,000 state
employees, would give each worker just an $87-a-month increase.
Civil
servants, particularly teachers, nurses and doctors, have been striking on
and off for better pay since 2007.
The crisis peaked in 2008, when staff
shortages forced state hospitals to close some units and teacher strikes
left just 50 days of classes in the whole year.
The
Sunday Times of South Africa said Mr. Mugabe intends to do whatever it takes
to win re-election, then name Defense Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa to finish
his term to settle the succession issue
Ntungamili Nkomo |
Washington
The ZANU-PF party of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on
Monday dismissed reports Mr. Mugabe would step down soon if he were to win
the next election to hand over power to a loyal successor who would
safeguard his interests and protect him from prosecution for alleged human
rights violations during his long tenure.
The Sunday Times of South
Africa reported that Mr. Mugabe intends to do whatever it takes to win
re-election, then pick long-time ally Defense Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa to
finish his term as a way to end the volatile question of his
succession.
Citing unnamed senior ZANU-PF officials, the paper said
Mugabe’s strategy was driven by the fear of retiring without guarantees as
to his personal security.
Observers say Mnangagwa would be a perfect
choice for Mugabe as he is a member of the all powerful Joint Operations
Command which comprises senior security service chiefs and is said to be
actively pushing for the re-election of the 87-year-old Mugabe.
But
ZANU-PF spokesman Rugare Gumbo said the Mugabe retirement story is not
true.
National Constitutional Assembly Chairman Lovemore Madhuku said
the strategy outlined by the Sunday Times would work only if ZANU-PF can win
enough seats in the next elections to exercise a parliamentary majority to
choose an interim president - if the revised Zimbabwean constitution adopts
the present succession mechanism.
PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe has blasted the African Union as a
“toothless bulldog” for failing to stop the NATO-led campaign which led to
the fall of Libyan strongman, Colonel Muammar Gadaffi.
Addressing the
AU summit in Addis Ababa, Mugabe said: "We should have said no, no to
NATO.
“We fought imperialism and colonialism and forced them out of
Africa . . . Our founding fathers did not have the means, but they stood up
and said ‘no' but here we are absolutely silent.”
Last year NATO
launched a bombing campaign to back Libyan rebels in a nine-month uprising
which led to the fall of Gadaffi who was later killed after being captured
while trying to escape.
Mugabe said the AU should have stood up to the
West and opposed the bombing campaign adding the continental body was also
wrong to recognise the NTC without investigating Gadaffi’s
murder.
"Gadaffi was killed in broad daylight, his children hunted like
animals and then we rush to recognise the NTC," he said. "Well, well that
was Libya. Who will be next? Let us take care, all of us. It has not just
happened to Gadaffi.”
Mugabe said the West had now realised that "we are
toothless bulldogs" and warned that Africa faced a new wave of colonialism
as the West battles a deepening economic crisis.
"They have an
economic crisis in Europe, they have exhausted their resources,” he
said.
"Africa still has plenty of them. We are discovering more oil, more
minerals, gold more diamonds. “We still have our natural resources,
natural gas, so another recolonisation might take place.”
"I saw a
picture yesterday of Gadaffi shaking hands with Sarkozy in France after they
invited him there, but those hands that Gadaffi was shaking were the hands
that were going to kill him a few months later. "How far then do we go in
associating with such people?”
MUTARE- The Mayor of Mutare Brian James was forcefully ejected
from his office by municipal police and a number of Zanu PF
youths.
This followed his purpotted suspension on Friday by Ignatius
Chombo, Minister of Local Government and Urban Development for alleged
misconduct.
James who is also the councillor for Ward 12 in the city
received the suspension letter dated 19 January on Friday 27 January
2012.
In his letter, referenced “Suspension of Clr Brian James from being
councillor (Ward 12) Mutare City” Chombo wrote:
“Having cautioned you
in a letter of Remedial Intervention, dated 3 March 2010 and referenced
X/21/36, reports of misconduct continue to come to my office implying that
you are unrepentant.
“This leaves me with no option other than to invoke
Section 114 of the Urban Councils Act {Chapter 29:15}, to suspend you from
being a Councillor (Ward 12) for Mutare City, with immediate
effect.
“During this period of suspension, you shall not conduct any
council business, for and on behalf of council, within or outside council
premises and you shall not be eligible to receive any form of
remuneration.
“Please note that this suspension is in the interest of
ensuring sound local governance for effective service delivery in Mutare
City.”
The MDC-T meanwhile says the suspension was based on hear-say and
not facts as the letter does not explain explicitly the kind of misconduct
Clr James committed. “Neither does it mention the names of the people who
supplied him with the said reports, making the letter void in many
respects.”
The MDC-T condemned “the continued persecution of its members
and officials” and said “Chombo is the lead culprit in gross mismanagement,
corruption and fraud. He has failed to come out clean on the massive
properties he has acquired during his tenure as Minister of Local
Government.”
Among the property owned by Chombo are 20 stands in the
upmarket Crow Hill area in Borrowdale, 10 in Glen Lorne, four in Victoria
Falls, four in Chitungwiza and another four in Beitbridge.
As if this
is not enough, Chombo has four commercial stands in Kariba, four in Banket,
four in Norton and three in Bulawayo. The list also included more than 15
top-of-the range vehicles, most likely purchased from proceeds of his
illegal property deals.
Meanwhile, analysts say Chombo has shown how
confused he is after he appointed a committee to investigate Chitungwiza
Municipality for corruption. This follows reports of rampant corruption and
misuse of resources in the town.
The accusations against Chombo
resulted from his earlier resistance to have corrupt councillors
fired.
“Maybe at that time Chombo feared that if the councillors were
fired, they would spill the beans on the minister’s interference and
involvement in the running of Zimbabwe’s third largest urban
settlement.”
“Remember, Chombo himself owns properties in Chitungwiza and
who knows, perhaps these were fraudulently acquired,” a source said. -
Nehanda Radio
The MDC-T has said preparations for a
demonstration in Mutare, against the suspension of the Mayor Brian James,
are at an advanced stage.
James was elected councilor for Ward 12 of the
eastern border city on an MDC-T ticket and was subsequently chosen as Mayor
by the councilors following the 2008 harmonised elections.
He was
however suspended last week by the Local Government minister Ignatius Chombo
for alleged ‘misconduct’. The MDC-T described the suspension as ‘ridiculous’
and threatened to disregard Chombo’s action.
MDC-T spokesman for
Manicaland, Pishai Muchauraya told SW Radio Africa on Tuesday that the
suspension of James was absurd and that over 20 000 people in Mutare have
since signed a petition calling for his reinstatement.
“We have written a
letter to the police seeking permission to stage the demonstrations from
various wards to the government complex where the petition will be handed
over to the governor Chris Mushowe,” Muchauraya explained.
He added:
“This will be followed by an address to the protestors by the MDC Provincial
leadership. We notified the police of our intentions on Monday and we are
still waiting for a reply.”
Muchauraya said Chombo was fighting hard to
get rid of James, who recently blocked the sale of land at the Meikles Park
to Anjin, a Chinese firm that is mining diamonds in Chiadzwa in partnership
with the State owned Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation
(ZMDC).
The Chinese firm wanted to buy land at Meikles Park (which is
prime land in the central business district) for peanuts and intended to
build an 18 storey hotel which would also house a supermarket and other
shops.
Chombo had ordered the Mutare City Council to first give the land
to Anjin in exchange for state land that the council would get from the
government.
“Council defied Chombo’s interference and on top of that
James wanted an audit of council books from 2008 to see how many stands have
been sold in the city and who,” Muchauraya said.
He added: “Don’t
forget that Chombo owns properties in almost every town and city in
Zimbabwe. This action by Chombo to suspend James may be an attempt to block
his demands for an audit.”
Zimbabwe’s civil society organisations have
said the democratic transition in the country has ‘stalled’, and is in
danger of being reversed by Robert Mugabe’s call for elections in the
absence of credible reforms.
Dewa Mavhinga, the regional coordinator for
the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition said any plans to have elections without
reforms should be totally rejected.
Civil society organisations were in
Ethiopia in the last week to put pressure on the African Union (AU), to push
the inclusive government to ensure that the next elections are held in a
conducive political environment.
Continental leaders met in Addis
Ababa for the AU’s annual summit of leaders, which ended on Monday. Mugabe
attended the summit and was reportedly lobbying other leaders to let him
call for elections this year, with or without a new constitution.
The
Crisis Coalition’s Mavhinga told SW Radio Africa on Tuesday that his
organisation has flatly rejected that call and has also been lobbying SADC
and the AU to independently examine and certify that the environment is
conducive to holding non-violent, free and fair elections.
“The
elections must be robustly monitored and observed by local, regional and
international groups who should have unfettered access to all parts of the
country,” Mavhinga said. Mavhinga emphasised that with the help of SADC and
the United Nations, the AU should deploy peace-keeping monitors to Zimbabwe
at least three months ahead of elections.
“This move is intended to
prevent state-sponsored violence and intimidation and to guarantee peaceful
transfer of power to the eventual winner of the elections. The peace-keeping
monitors should remain on the ground a further three months after elections
have been held,” he said.
He continued: “This is the reason why we were
lobbying the AU fathers in Ethiopia. During the several meetings we held, we
told them Zimbabwe is not yet ready for polls, citing the stalemate in the
coalition government and a host of outstanding issues, such as a lack of
electoral and media reforms.” “As civil society organisations operating in
Zimbabwe, we reiterate that Zimbabwe has not yet instituted sufficient
reforms to guarantee democratic, non-violent, free and fair elections and
should not go to elections unless such reforms have been implemented,”
Mavhinga also said. He added: “The infrastructure responsible for widespread
electoral violence remains intact and active and the leadership of army and
the security forces remain extremely politicised and blatantly partisan
towards ZANU PF.”
Bulawayo, January
31, 2012 - The Minister of Education Sports and Culture, Senator David
Coltart on Monday told a European Union delegation touring Matabeleland
region that imbalances between Mashonaland and Matabeleland region started
during the Gukurahundi atrocities that claimed more than 20 000 lives in
Matabeleland and Midlands region.
He said then grants to build schools
were only allocated to the Mashonaland region.
He also added that
Zimbabwe required billions of dollars in order to solve historical
imbalances that exist under education sector between Matabeleland and
Mashonaland region. He disclosed that most of the pupils in Matabeleland
region walk more than 30km to school on a daily basis. In addition there
were few ‘A’ level schools that offer mathematics and science subjects hence
it was not worthy for the government to set up science and technology
universities in the region.
He added that Zimbabwe must prioritse
basic education to all the pupils in the country and make sure that they
meet the budget allocation for education sector for it is the backbone of a
progressive nation.
“Last year we got a budget allocation of US$14,8
million and this meant that it was equivalent to US$5 per pupil but other
ministries like Home Affairs, Justice and defense got more money than
education, which is not fair,” said Senator Coltart.
Addressing
Journalist at Bulawayo Art Gallery, after touring EU projects the UNICEF
Representative, Dr, Peter Salama said that he was very much pleased with the
Education Transition Fund programme in Zimbabwe as it had achieved a ratio
of one to one text book per pupil.
He said that they are now working on
the second phase of ETF programme that will see the rehabilitation of
schools sanitation, training of teachers and buying of school
furniture.
“We are grateful about Zimbabwe’s ETF programme. World-wide
this country has achieved the one to one ratio of pupil text book allocation
in 18 months and we will continue to fund the education sector in Zimbabwe
and the main partners in EU have pledged to support Zimbabwe because they
have proved to be a working country,” said Dr Salama.
Zimbabwe is
working towards achieving the 2015 millennium development goals of universal
access to education to all children.
Meanwhile EU’s ambassador to
Zimbabwe Aldo Dell'Ariccia said Monday targeted sanctions imposed on
President Robert Mugabe and his allies will be removed, if the country holds
free and fair elections.
EU, alongside the United States, Australia,
Switzerland and New Zealand imposed targeted sanctions on Mugabe and his top
military, and business associates as punishment for allegedly stealing
elections, perpetuating human rights violations and failure to uphold the
rule of law.
However addressing a press conference in Bulawayo today
(Monday) EU Ambassador to Zimbabwe Aldo Dell'Ariccia said that there will be
no reasons not to remove targeted sanctions imposed on Zanu (PF) leaders if
free and non violent elections are held in the country.
"There will
no reasons for European Union not to remove these restrictive measures if
free and fair elections without any intimidation are held. Those elections
should also follow guidelines set by Africa Union and SADC. Voter education
should be conducted before the elections are held , the media should be free
and results should be accepted by all elections contenders,” said
Dell'Ariccia
Dell’Ariccia said EU will currently continue to support
Zimbabwe through Aid and dismissed allegations that targeted sanctions are
affecting the Zimbabwe’s economy.
“There is no way travel
restrictions imposed on a certain individual not to travel to Europe can
affect the country’s economy, that’s is not true,” he
said
Dell'Ariccia said his delegation is touring Matebeleland region the
whole of this week in order to improve its linkages with and its
understanding of the specific issues of region.
He said that the
delegation is committed to an inclusive approach towards supporting
Zimbabwe's development. The EU envoy added that this has been particularly
evident since the inception of the current government, with a clear mandate
that the EU Delegation has received to support the implementation of the
GPA.
Johannesburg - Recent media reports recounted that Zimbabwe
National Army boss Constantine Chiwenga summoned Zanu (PF) Constitutional
Parliamentary Committee Co-Chairperson (COPAC) Paul Mangwana and other party
functionaries in the Copac process to de-brief the military superiors on the
on-going drafting process.
By Gideon Chitanga and Trust
Matsilele
Once again the military- security –police complex is
interfering with a purely civilian and political process which should be
above it. In a democracy the military should account to civilian elected
authority without arrogating itself such powers as should be accountably and
legitimately enjoyed by the politicians without otherwise subverting the
country’s national laws. In the contemporary situation in the country, the
military as all other organs of the state is governed by the current
constitution as amended to embrace the inclusive government.
By
summoning Mangwana and other Zanu (PF) stalwarts leading the Copac process,
Chiwenga and other military chefs are undermining a legitimate civil process
which is way above their mandate in terms of the constitution, intellect,
grasp in terms of their professional orientation and a direct violation and
assault on democratic ethos of our country. It is painful that those who
should be at the forefront of proudly defending the national interest are
now in the habit of subverting it for selfish partisan and personal
interest. Zimbabweans should never again allow their wishes to be
subverted.
The call by the service chiefs to be briefed by a faction
of COPAC is a threat to national security tantamount to a coup. Indeed any
factional and partisan actions by the military that impinges on legitimate
civilian authority are illegal and unconstitutional hence they should be
robustly resisted by any means possible. We say so because it is evident
that the military is acting like the super organ\government institution
subjecting the citizens to de facto military rule with President Mugabe as
its legitimating civilian face. The call by the military to be briefed by a
faction of COPAC should worry the MDCs, civil society, Zanu (PF) and all
democracy loving Zimbabweans. The inversion of internal Zanu (PF) politics
and national politics in Zimbabwe by the military can be a pervasive cancer
which is an albatross upon which democracy may totally fail in Zimbabwe. We
want to warn those in Zanu (PF) who are part to these plots, the fence
sitters and those who complain quietly that they have an interest in
re-asserting their political authority as much as those in other political
parties.
The history of military regimes show that once the military
taste political power, it tends to behave like a vampire which has tasted
blood. The more we allow the rogue political elements in military fatigues
to dabble in party and factional politics the more we complicate our
country’s political transition. All politicians have an interest in
legitimate democratic electoral politics since it’s the only way they can
contest for political space and office in the public arena. Political
players in Zanu (PF) as those in other parties should cringe at the thought
of those who wield military technology and resources dictatorially imposing
their will on the national course of events. We call upon everyone to
realise that the call for reforms in the security sector is crucial in as
far as maintaining peace and stability in the country is concerned, at least
in the long term if not in the short run.
For Zanu (PF) supporters
and leaders, unchecked maneuvers by factional elements in the military may
seal the fate of succession politics by ensuring the ascension of the
Mnangagwa faction, thus certifying an alliance and collaboration of the
military in party and national politics. In practice this means, the
military will be the chief power broker in Zimbabwe’s politics with a
civilian president who only acts as window dressing. With the prospect of
having the cold but terrifying character of Mnangagwa at the helm of the
state, we can only imagine a blitzkrieg of political purges internally
within Zanu (PF) and intensified potentially bloody political contestation
as Zimbabweans will surely continue to fight for democracy. The nature of
the military-security functions which are mostly secretive, coercive ,
suspicious especially in the blood tainted short history of Zanu (PF's)
reign in Zimbabwe are enough to make every concerned citizen very worried at
the prospect of any involvement of the military in national
politics.
More importantly, should Copac be seen to be accountable to
the military and who is the military in the Zimbabwean context? Is the
military usurping the role of the principals as constituted in the GPA? If
so, is it not another subversive act, a de jure coup, the biggest crime
against the state which should see the culprits incarcerated. Is it not the
case that the military should be accountable to civilian state authority ,
should we not see this case for evidence that more than at any point in time
the military must be reformed as a matter of urgency if Zimbabwe is to have
free and fair elections that will bring a legitimate government and ensure
peace and prosperity.
Chiwenga, at the centre of the call for the
briefing with Copac leaders is known to be harbouring presidential ambitions
and to be a leader of the military grouping with political interests and
massive clandestine business interests and ventures in the country. He is
also a member of the Joint Operations Command (JOC) composed of the heads of
prison services, air force, ZNA, Intelligence, defense Minister and chaired
by President Mugabe. The JOC although instituted as a formal policy think
tank for the military has lately informally been operationalized at the
behest of Zanu (PF) for all kinds of otherwise illegal partisan political
machinations synonymous with that party’s political crudity and brutality.
In the past few months Chiwenga has been linked closely to the Mnangagwa
faction in Zanu (PF's) subtle but extremely volatile and fluid succession
plotting. Mnangagwa is understood to be bracing himself to succeed President
Mugabe.
The role of the military in the country’s national politics
remains vexatious. More fundamentally, it questions the role of the military
in a democracy, and in particular whether Zimbabwe is under a quasi-military
regime or a democratic elected government. In theory the country is under
the administration of the inclusive government which can be described as
semi-democratically constituted as it brought back the loosing ZANU PF
factions into government. The Inclusive Government is comprised of rival
parties who should be negotiating new rules of political contestation,
including the role of the military in national politics, after the country
suffered an electoral cul-de-sac in 2008. In the current circumstances, the
military continue to act in a manner that consistently erodes political
democratic institutionalization. The national constitution is supreme that a
faction however powerful should not be allowed to temper with the potential
bedrock and foundation for our aspirations for democracy.
It is
important to understand that the military was implicated in the widespread
political violence that swept the country in March and June 2008 polls while
the JOC itself, Jonathan Moyo (advising Zanu (PF) before being formally
re-admitted to that party) and defense Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa were
implicated in fiddling and manipulating the 2008 Presidential election
results which were otherwise won by the MDC-T and Morgan Tsvangirai. Some
Zanu (PF) and military elites have amassed wealth they never imagined to
ever accumulate in their lifetime at the expense of the loyal rank and file
cadres in the army, police, CIO, prison service and ordinary Zimbabweans. We
can speculate whether the securocrats see the national constitution in the
making as undermining their current privileged status. Do the military
cohorts in alliance with the Mnangagwa faction see the new constitution as a
potential threat to their collective political and economic interests? While
their intention is to retain and gain more political power, how do we
position President Mugabe in this matrix? Is he an ailing, vulnerable,
possibly manipulated frail geriatric who has lost control or a Willy old
“fox” in total control of the government and the military?
Zanu (PF)
has operated like a quasi- military outfit. Given the contested transitional
politics post-2000 such configuration becomes problematic. Democratic forces
can not allow the military faction in ZANU-PF to contaminate the democratic
aspirations of Zimbabweans. Just as much as Zimbabweans confronted Robert
Mugabe and his self-enriching acolytes for subverting their will by rigging
the 2008 polls that were won by the MDC-T, pushing them into a coalition
government they never imagined, likewise Zimbabweans should stand up in
defense of their views which they gave to the constitutional commissioners
to ensure that the same subversive dark underhand does not sabotage
them.
We urge the two MDCs to expose the political elements in the
military who continue to masquerade as professionals while collaborating
with Zanu (PF) to scuttle the democratic process. The MDCs are in government
as a result of the GPA, but crucially the election result of 2008. More than
the GPA itself, we remind the MDC-T officials and their side of government
that they draw their legitimacy from their victory in the 2008 polls. We
would like to underline that their rhetoric and actions both in the party
and government should draw emphasis on the fact of this electoral victory.
It must be the song upon which the prospects for democracy should be
sustained. It is the MDC-T’s uncontested victory in March 2008 parliamentary
elections that otherwise legitimizes the continued existence of Zanu (PF) in
state institutions through the inclusive government. Instead of continuously
disrupting a democratic constitutional process just like they have
previously stole elections and committed heinous acts of violence, both Zanu
(PF) actors and their supporting military elements must appreciate and
understand that their craving for power could be a recipe for serious
conflict and instability in the country hence the demand for them to respect
government institutions and processes.
South Africa’s police force is facing criticism for refusing
to help a Zimbabwean man, who was beaten by security guards at a refugee
reception office in that country last week.
The man, Lucky Dube, was
trying to sort out his asylum documents at the Maitland Refugee Reception
Office in the Western Cape, after making an application late last year. He
told SW Radio Africa on Tuesday that he and others in the outside queue at
the office last Thursday were told to ‘move’ by the security guards
there.
“They told us to move, so we did, and then one kept telling me to
move and move and then he pushed me and I fell over. I got up and asked ‘Why
have you pushed me? I am doing what you said’,” Dube explained.
He
continued: “I could see he had something in his hand and he was trying to
hit me and I tried to defend myself. He then called two more guards and they
all started beating me.”
Dube eventually collapsed and was taken to
hospital. After he was treated for bruising and a broken nose he was
released, and advised to go to the local police to try and report the
incident. But the cops refused to let him make a statement.
“They
made me wait for the detective and when he came he asked me lots of
questions but he said he couldn’t help me, he said ‘You’re illegal, I can’t
help you’,” Dube said.
Western Cape based refugee rights group,
PASSOP then sent its head paralegal officer to assist Dube to lay the
charges against the security guards who assaulted him. But, again they
refused to allow Dube his right to lay charges.
“Their excuse for
this was because his documents had expired – the very reason he was at the
refugee centre where he was assaulted,” PASSOP said in a
statement.
The group said: “Refusing the right to access justice is
unconstitutional. The Maitland Police’s actions were unlawful and they are
acting as if they were in collusion with the perpetrators at the Refugee
Reception Centre.”
They added: “The case of Mr. Dube is just one of the
examples of the type of injustices that refugees, asylum seekers and
immigrants have to suffer in the face of SAPS officers who are xenophobic,
or at best, apathetic to the plight of non-nationals.”
Dube meanwhile
explained that the treatment he suffered, especially at the hands of the
police, was not “that surprising.”
“You hear stories all the time about
how people are treated, especially if you aren’t South African. So I am not
surprised,” Dube said.
The assault on Dube meanwhile comes as South
Africa continues to face accusations of ill treatment of foreigners in the
country, with the authorities appearing to be actively preventing asylum
seekers from applying for protection.
According to the Lawyers for
Human Rights (LHR) group, a recent policy change has made it mandatory for
new applicants for asylum to produce an ‘Asylum Transit Permit’ when they
submit an application for asylum at refugee reception offices, located in
Musina, Pretoria, Durban and Cape Town. These permits, despite not being
part of the Refugees Act, are meant to be made available at the
border.
But the LHR has found that this Permit is not being issued at the
main point of entry at Beitbridge, potentially leaving hundreds of
Zimbabweans at risk of arrest and deportation.
At the same time,
police road blocks are also being set up in the Limpopo Province to screen
the immigration status of all foreigners travelling out of the area. The LHR
said that most asylum seekers have to travel through this province if
they’ve come into South Africa at the Musina border. The group said that the
police are arresting people who may be trying to seek protection as asylum
seekers. These persons are then being summarily deported.
"Baboons are an issue that must be dealt with here because they
destroy travellers’ goods," the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority station manager
at the Chirundu border post, Tichaona Phiri, told NewsDay.
"Sometimes
they bite or clap people on their faces if they try to defend their property
and they can snatch ladies' handbags and even destroy cars as they search
for food."
The apes also tear up sacks of maize on trucks moving through
the border, a committee of lawmakers was told during a visit to the site,
located in a national park.
"These baboons can smell maize on trucks
and considering their huge numbers, it is very difficult to control them,"
the newspaper quoted Phiri as saying.
"But the problem is that they
behave like human beings and are very good tricksters," said Phiri.
Harare, January
31, 2012 -A Harare magistrate Walter Chikwanha on Monday put on hold an
application by the family of the late Solomon Mujuru which had requested to
invite an independent pathologist to quiz a state pathologist in the
on-going inquest on the death of the retired Army chief last August.
“The
prerogative to summon witnesses in this case lies with the presiding
magistrate. As the presiding magistrate I have already subpoenaed all the
witnesses who are suitable for the inquest. I have among the witnesses
subpoenaed a pathologist who examined the body of the deceased who is yet to
testify. While I will not oppose to the calling of other witnesses they
should add value in the inquest," said the magistrate.
"We will
consider your application after we have heard from the first pathologist and
you should also justify why the opinion of a second pathologist is
important," added Chikanha while dismissing the Mujuru’s request
Monday.
The Mujuru family through their lawyer, Thekor kewada, said the
request for another pathologist would result in 'credible results' after
former army commander was buried before forensic examinations to establish
he was indeed the one who died in the inferno.
Commenting on the
decision to throw away their request the Mujuru Kewada said:
“I must
confess that I am disappointed because the indication that the magistrate
gave me when I had a meeting with him and the prosecutors was that he will
not object but give his ruling today. I was hoping that we could combine the
two that is having the local pathologist here giving evidence with the South
African pathologist sitting in.
"I had also requested the magistrate to
call the South African pathologist because he is the one who has that
mandate, but this has not been granted...” Kewada told reporters on
Monday.
The high profile inquest on Monday saw the 32nd witnesses
Bethwell Takura Mutandiro, the Director of Forensic Science laboratory in
the Zimbabwe Republic Police, giving evidence. He said his team failed to
detect the cause of the fire that gutted the house of the late General
Mujuru.
The inquest has been adjourned to Thursday when South African
forensic Scientists are expected to testify.
By Tendai Kamhungira and Xolisani Ncube Tuesday, 31 January 2012
12:33
HARARE - Evidence tendered in court yesterday showed that
retired general Solomon Mujuru could have died before the fire that gutted
his Beatrice farmhouse igniting widely held speculation that he could have
been murdered.
In the meantime, the Mujuru family will have to wait
longer for permission to bring in a South African pathologist to do an
independent verification into the cause of his death.
Magistrate
Walter Chikwanha told an ongoing inquest that he could not grant or dismiss
an application filed by Mujuru family lawyer, Thakor Kewada, to have
pathologist Dr Reggie Perumal from South Africa assist with questioning the
local pathologist Dr Gabriel Alvero.
Chikwanha said an application to
call another witness could only be considered after Dr Alvero’s
evidence.
He said Kewada was supposed to justify why Perumal should
testify as well as indicate the value he will add to the
inquest.
Bethwell Takura Mutandiro, director of forensic science with the
Zimbabwe Republic Police testified in the inquest and said the carpet
beneath charred remains exhibited less fire damage than areas around the
body.
“This indicates that the body was lying in that position before
fire progressed,” said Mutandiro.
“The burning pattern on the carpet
indicated that the body protected the carpet from intense heat,” added
Mutandiro. He said the carpet below the body took the shape of the body and
it was charred beyond recognition.
Mutandiro further told the court
that when he arrived, the body was covered in a blanket facing downwards
with the left hand under the chest. The right arm was stretched out with its
extreme burnt out.
"The feet were missing from the body as a result of
the fire,” said Mutandiro.
Yesterday, Mujuru family lawyer Kewada
quizzed Mutandiro on how the body could have been burnt beyond recognition
yet some curtain remains were retrieved in the house and some were not as
severely burnt.
“If a curtain burns at the top, where there are hangers
and when the curtain falls, it falls to the ground and according to our
experience, the curtain is preserved in that form,” responded
Mutandiro."
A private security guard Clemence Runhare and a maid Rosemary
Short have previously told the court they heard gunshots on the night the
decorated soldier’s remains were found in one of the rooms at his
farmhouse.
Police officers who attended the scene also confirmed to the
court last week that Mujuru’s body was found facing down and his intestines
severely burnt.
The scientist yesterday said the fire could have started
in the middle of main bedroom before spreading to other rooms.
“The
tiles in the centre of the main bedroom room exhibited intense heat damage.
The fire was coming from the main bedroom to the mini lounge and spreading
to the rest of house,” said Mutandiro.
Mujuru’s remains were found lying
down in the mini lounge close to the door leading to the main
entrance.
Mutandiro further told the court that fire that gutted the
general’s house was not an ordinary fire but said his department failed to
ascertain its cause.
He said this after being asked by a state
representative Clemence Chimbari on whether, from his experience, this was a
normal fire.
“A fire of this size is quite complex and cannot be judged
as an ordinary fire,” Mutandiro said.
He told the court that his
department got involved in the case because they wanted to ascertain any
facet of criminality in Mujuru’s death, but after investigations, they still
could not tell whether there was any aspect of criminality or not.
“I
cannot say whether or not a crime was committed. My investigations do not
point to either direction and that is acceptable when fire breaks out,” said
Mutandiro.
Yesterday, Mutandiro confirmed that DNA tests carried out
after taking blood samples from Mujuru’s daughter Kumbirai and flesh from
the charred remains matched.
HARARE - Chimanimani West MP Lynette Karenyi, (LK) talks to The
Legal Monitor (LM) about her prison experience over the last Christmas
period.
She was imprisoned at Mutare Remand Prison from December 19 to
December 28, 2011 on accusations of calling President Robert Mugabe a
homosexual who had enjoyed gay relations with former information minister
Jonathan Moyo and the late President Canaan Banana.
In the question
and answer below, Karenyi speaks about her trauma at seeing the pain of
children as young as nine months old jailed with their mothers in the prison
cells. Read on...
LM: How did you take your imprisonment at such a
time?
LK: I was prepared for the worst. I spent my 2010 Christmas in
Hotsprings with my family.
In 2011, I was in remand prison. But I
knew this could happen because the tone of the police officers who summoned
me to the station was very hostile.
I was also alive to the history of
prosecutors abusing their powers to keep politicians like me in remand
prison. LM: What kind of support did you receive in remand prison?
LK:
Every morning I would see women, youths and men outside the
prison.
Prison guards were saying I could only see one visitor but the
people kept coming even if they couldn’t see me. It kept my spirit
intact.
LM: What is your constituency’s feeling about this?
LK: It
was tough for them because of the memories of 2008 when I spent a year or
two going to court on charges that I forged my nomination.
They were
worried I would not come back. So this was another experience and they were
asking ‘what is happening to our MP’, and they would come to the prison even
if I did not have a chance to meet them personally, but they were with me
always.
LM: Your ordeal comes as tensions escalate because of talk of
elections in 2012. What is the mood in remand prison on this
issue?
LK: Most inmates I talked to have this thinking that elections
should be held as soon as possible, including those that are jailed on
non-political matters.
Most of them think a new government is most
likely to grant them amnesty as a sign of new beginnings for
Zimbabwe.
But honestly speaking from a personal point of view, I think
elections this year would be premature.
With these arrests and
violence, it will become difficult to campaign. Even some sitting MPs will
not be able to address even one rally in their constituencies.
Those
able to hold rallies might refrain from free speech fearing they will be
arrested for saying anything against President Mugabe, who as a political
rival is a legitimate target for attack at rallies by opponents like
us.
There must be more reforms, especially in the security sector. A
partisan security sector such as the one we have can only make things
worse.
LM: You are expecting worse?
LK: Of course. The trend is
not pleasing.
How can one be arrested and charged with undermining the
authority of the president when one probably did not even say those
words?
LM: What did you take from your stint in remand prison?
LK:
Sad memories mostly. At Mutare remand, the food is horrible. Inmates get two
small slices of bread in the morning and boiled beans in the
afternoon.
And then you imagine someone is going to stay there a year or
more. Health conditions are terrible. You share one bucket.
If you
ask the guards to bring you a bucket to use for a bath they tell you: ‘No no
no, you use the same bucket in your cell.’
Bearing in mind that there are
diseases, surely can one be expected to use the same bucket for
bathing?
They are supposed to allow relatives to bring in
buckets.
And inmates share one bathroom and being women you know every
month there is this ‘national duty’ and you need to use that one
bathroom?
I was sharing a cell with five women and three children and you
have just your little space to fit.
LM: How did you feel as a mother
sharing such conditions with innocent children?
LK: Up to now it is
haunting me every day. There is one woman with a nine-month-old
child.
She wants to breastfeed until the kid is a year-old.
Then
maybe plead with her mother to look after the child. With the other one, I
thought she will be coming out of prison soon with her child since the case
was minor.
She had been imprisoned for fighting. Then there was a child
who turned three on December 27 (2011). The prison guards were asking the
mother to take the baby home.
But she told me her husband died when
she was three months pregnant and her sister took the child for only two
months and returned the child.
She asked me to look for an organisation
that could take care of the child.
Up to now I am yet to find one. The
organisations I have approached tell me they only look after orphans. It is
a real challenge.
LM: What are some of the situations these children live
with daily in prison?
LK: Those kids experience hate in
prisons.
The language that people use in prison is vulgar and these
children are growing in that sort of environment. They are a forgotten
lot.
Think of this small child, two or three-years-old, without enough
clothes to change and no breakfast because the prison guards say they do not
have shares for children.
So if the mother gets two slices of bread
she has to share with the child.
The children only get porridge. Yet for
a three-year-old, breakfast is necessary. We are abusing those
children.
LM: You are in a position to influence things as MP?
LK:
Talking from a Girl Child point of view, the government should formulate
policies that are rigorously implemented to ensure children imprisoned with
their mothers do not lose out.
We should take care of these children.
They have not committed any crime.
Imagine, the baby is crying and other
inmates are shouting: ‘Iwe nyaradza mwana wako.’ Apamai wacho nefrustration
(‘Hey you, get your child to stop crying’ and the mother, out of
frustration) and depression just beats up the child.
It is a
challenge we have to overcome as political leaders and as a society.
LM:
What have you been doing about it as an MP?
LK: I have approached
chairpersons of the home affairs and justice portfolio committees in
Parliament so they can also visit and pay more attention to prisons.
Ammonium nitrate manufacturers – Sable Chemicals and Zimbabwe
Fertilizer Company, both subsidiaries of Chemplex Corporation Limited – said
that production is hampered by a lack of operating funds
Gibbs Dube |
Washington
Zimbabwean farmers who managed to get a maize crop in the
ground this spring despite shortages of seed and fertilizer now face
shortages of ammonium nitrate top-dressing - though it can be purchased in
the informal marketplace at premium prices.
The latest shortages have
raised fears of low yields in the current season.
Ammonium nitrate
manufacturers Sable Chemicals and the Zimbabwe Fertilizer Company, both
subsidiaries of state enterprise Chemplex Corporation Limited, said that
production of fertilizer has been hampered by their limited operating
capital.
Chemplex Corporation, owned by the state-controlled Zimbabwe
Industrial Development Corporation, said that production has also been hurt
by high prices for electric power which have almost crippled production at
Sable Chemicals.
Fertilizer company executives declined to
comment.
Sources said informal traders are doing a brisk business
charging up to US$50 for a 50-kilogram bag of ammonium nitrate. The
recommended retail price is US$30.
Parliamentary Agriculture
Committee Chairman Moses Jiri said the shortage of ammonium nitrate will
have a negative impact on this year's crops.
Commercial Farmers Union
President Charles Taffs said the government should provide financial
assistance to ammonium nitrate producers.
“The problem lies with lack of
capital to boost the production of this crucial agricultural input and lack
of planning by the government,” Taffs said.
HARARE - Farm workers, most of them migrant labourers, left
destitute by the chaotic land reform programme are having their “inhuman and
degrading treatment” under the spot-light again.
Mozambican
descendent Binias Yolamu came to Zimbabwe as a young 24-year-old in 1964 and
has been a farm labourer since.
Three decades after the end of
colonialism, Yolamu is battling to keep head above water and has had to
approach the courts to intervene after being chased off the place he had
called home for ages.
With nowhere else to go, having established his
roots in Zimbabwe, a now elderly Yolamu is pinning hopes on the Supreme
Court to end his misery.
Yolamu has made an application for referral of
his matter together with 84 other families to the Supreme Court challenging
the constitutionality of some parts of the Gazetted Land (Consequential
Provisions) Act, which he says have reduced him and other farm workers in
his situation to “inhuman and degrading treatment.”
“The land reform
process is a form of affirmative action meant to advance black economic
empowerment,” his lawyers argue in court papers.
“It (land reform) was
not envisaged to be a chief driver of leading poor farm workers into
destitution by driving them off the farms from where they are employed
without any form of recognition or terminal benefits to enable them to start
a new life after investing their whole lives to working on land that was
subsequently gazetted.
“That, in our respectful view is not empowerment
but forced destitution which could never have had been the intention of the
legislature,” the lawyers argued in an affidavit deposed with the
Magistrates Court last week.
Yolamu came to Zimbabwe from Mozambique as a
migrant worker in 1964 and is among workers from Mgutu Farm in Mazowe facing
charges of contravening Section 3 (2) (a) as read with Section 3 (3) of the
Gazetted Land (Consequential Provisions) Act, (Chapter 20:28) “Occupation of
Gazetted Land without Lawful Authority.”
This follows a complaint by
a new farmer Kingstone Dutiro, who wants the employees of former farm owner
Archie Black to leave Mgutu Farm.
The State, led by Edmore Makoto, is now
prosecuting the 85 workers.
The workers accuse the State of failing to
protect them as enshrined in the Constitution of Zimbabwe.
Yolamu and
his co-accused persons say they have nowhere else to go as they cannot trace
their roots to Malawi or Mozambique where they are originally
from.
Yolamu has been at the farm for 48 years as a
worker.
“Neither Section 16, 16A, 16B of the Constitution of Zimbabwe,
nor the Gazetted Lands (Consequential Provisions), Act (Chapter 20:28),
contain such a provision terminating my contract of employment by mere
virtue of the farm being gazetted,” Yolamu argues.
“Being prosecuted
in this matter for residing at a farm where I have been accommodated as a
consequence of my employment thereat is an act of constructive dismissal
which I must be protected against at law.”
Yolamu – through lawyers —
Lewis Uriri, Jeremiah Bamu and Kennedy Masiye, argues that the land reform
was meant to address colonial land imbalances and not infringe on labour
rights.
“These laws (Sections 16, 16A and 16B of the Constitution and the
Gazetted Lands (Consequential Provisions) Act, [chapter 20:28]), deal with
ownership of land which is the subject of a farming enterprise. It does not
deal with the individual relationships such as employment within the farming
enterprise itself. To this end, these laws do not and must never be
construed as interfering in any way with our labour rights,” says
Yolamu.
The group of former farm workers says since the departure of
Black they “have lived in extreme and abject poverty that has been forced on
us.”
The 72-year-old said: “These plot holders have made use of our
services on various occasions and have failed to remunerate us for these
services. This in our view could be the reason why they are now
orchestrating for our prosecution in this matter. We submit that this is an
abuse of court process for an employer to seek the prosecution of its
employees simply because it is failing to pay such employees for services
rendered.”
Harare Magistrate Lazarus Murendo is expected to hear the
State’s opposition to the application for referral filed by the former farm
workers.
Prosecutor Makoto told the court that he would be opposing the
application when the case resumes on Friday.
Last week, Magistrate
Murendo requested the public gallery to be emptied to accommodate some of
the 85 accused persons while the application was being made.
“It
would be unfair for the accused, some of them being elderly and mothers with
babies to be standing in court,” he said while appealing to court attendees
to allow the accused persons to utilise the public gallery seats.
The 85
workers say they have not been paid since Black left.
By Wonai Masvingise, Staff Writer Tuesday, 31 January
2012 09:50
HARARE - Police have closed down one of Harare’s most
popular braai spots at Mereki, taking with them food and pots belonging to
vendors as part of efforts to curb a devastating typhoid
outbreak.
Harare has been beset by the biggest typhoid outbreak in recent
history and at least 80 people have been hospitalised so far.
One
visibly shaken vendor who asked for anonymity said the closure of Mereki had
wrecked her life since cooking sadza and roasting meat for customers at the
popular joint was her source of livelihood.
“I send my children to school
with the money that I get from here. I have been working here for the past
21 years. Where am I supposed to go now? How will I send my children to
school?”
Another vendor claims to have been operating her braai business
at the popular spot since 1986.
She told the Daily News how
truncheon-wielding police came and closed down the place.
“They
(police) came and extinguished our fires and confiscated chickens and meat
we were braaing. They also took our 10kg bags of unopened maize meal as well
as pots of cooked sadza that were on the fires.”
“I don’t know why they
closed us down because our business here is legal. We were paying $228 per
month to Harare City Council in order to operate.
“The police said we do
not have proper water and toilet facilities here but we have been helped out
by shop owners who opened their facilities to our customers. We actually put
up a tap and we have that borehole with clean water,” said the
vendor.
Harare provincial police spokesperson James Sabau said closing
down the popular joint was part of ongoing efforts to stop the spread of
typhoid.
“We are launching an operation to get rid of meat being sold in
open spaces by people without operating licences and Mereki happens to be
one of those spaces. In view of the current spreading of typhoid, we have
had to close down such spaces,” said Sabau.
“I don’t think there’s
anything legal about Mereki. Of course, those operating in their shops are
legal but the people that are selling outside are illegal. We didn’t just
target Mereki, we also went to Kuwadzana and Dzivaresekwa.”
Sabau
declined to say which other popular braai places would be targeted next by
police.
Illegal vendors have been accused of spreading typhoid through
selling contaminated foodstuffs like fish, chicken, beef and
sadza.
Typhoid causes vomiting, stomach cramps and
diarrhoea.
Suspected cases of typhoid are being treated at Beatrice
Infectious Diseases Hospitals.
Authorities have warned the outbreak
could spread to previously unaffected areas.
They also say a cholera
outbreak is imminent if the current sanitation situation and erratic water
supply continue.
HARARE - Defence Attorney Beatrice Mtetwa has challenged the
state to bring Mines and Mining Development minister, Obert Mpofu to court
and defend his actions on the alleged $2 billion diamond mining deal which
he approved involving Core Mining and Minerals Limited and the Zimbabwe
Mining Development Company (ZMDC).
Mtetwa told Justice Chinembiri
Bhunu yesterday at the appearance of Core Mining boss, Lovemore Kurotwi and
former ZMDC executive, Dominic Mubaiwa that Mpofu should be brought to
court.
She said the state had erred in that her client (Kurotwi) had
acted in common purpose with Mubaiwa when her client dealt with Mpofu in all
his deals.
“It is very clear that the first accused person (Kurotwi)
met the minister of Mines (Mpofu) several times in 2009,” Mtetwa
said.
“It was the minister who referred the accused to (Dominic) Mubaiwa
for further consultations. It boggles the mind how, then, the accused person
is said to have acted in common purpose with Mubaiwa when Mubaiwa acted on
the directives of the minister.
“If the accused person (Kurotwi) made
any misrepresentations to the minister, then that must be said clearly by
the minister and he should come here and state what misrepresentations were
made,” she added.
She queried the minister’s conspicuous absence from
the list of witnesses to testify in the trial.
“The state has not
explained why the minister’s name is conspicuously absent from the list of
witnesses to testify,” she said.
Mtetwa also took the state’s attorney,
Chris Mtangadura from the Attorney General’s office to task over allegations
her client had undue influence in the making of decisions that effectively
led to memorandums of understanding between Core Mining and ZMDC.
“My
learned friend (Mtangadura) averred that the first accused person unduly
influenced the outcome of the meetings where the memorandums that gave birth
to the joint venture were signed.
“He did not clearly explain how
this happened given that there was due diligence that was done by
ZMDC.
“One other clear fact is that my client could not have influenced
the outcome of those (ZMDC) meetings as he did not sit on the ZMDC board and
also never attended a single meeting that discussed the issue,” she
added.
The defence attorney placed it before the court that her client
was sure the due diligence report which gave birth to the ZMDC/ Core Mining
deal was a true account of the situation the latter company was
in.
She said the ZMDC carried its own due diligence based on its own
requirements and judgment, arguing that there was no undue influence in the
outcome of the report.
“It should amaze this court how one can
produce a fake due diligence report when you are not part of the team that
carries out the due diligence exercise,” she said.
On the claim by
the state that Kurotwi deprived the state of investment worth $2 billion,
Mtetwa said it was surprising how the state had reached that
conclusion.
“The first accused person (Kurotwi), does not know how that
allegation came about. The charge sheet does not speak or explain about
that. None of the persons involved can clearly explain how that prejudice
came about.
“The only fact that is there is that the agreement says there
is a potential of investment of up to $2 billion.You do not need to be a
mathematics magician to understand that up to $2 billion might mean anything
between $10 000 and $2 billion. It is not $2 billion as a solid figure,”
Mtetwa said.
Mtetwa said she was convinced the state had no “real” case
at the moment.
She said there was need for the state attorney to withdraw
the charges before the court and then proceed when it has drawn up new
charges.
“The facts that the state wants to produce anew in this court
have completely changed,” she said.
“I believe it will be better for
my learned friend to withdraw the state’s charges and go back to the drawing
board to draw up new charges and we can proceed from there.
“The
state has unfettered access and time to change the charge sheet and withdraw
the current charges before this court,” she argued.
However, state
lawyer, Mtamangira said the state only wanted to amend the charge sheet and
could not completely withdraw the charges altogether.
“We have since
discovered that the evidence to be led during trial is at complete variance
with what is contained in the charge sheet,” said Mtamangira.
“What
we are seeking as the state is to be allowed to correct words that are on
the charge sheet. We need to replace some words we feel should be replaced
and also include some words we feel were erroneously omitted in the first
place.
Justice Bhunu adjourned the matter to tomorrow when he is going to
make a ruling as to whether the state can proceed and make amendments to the
charge sheet as prayed for by Mtangadura.
Zimbabwe Human Rights Activist Released After Weekend in
Custody
http://www.voanews.com 30 January
2012 ZANU-PF Harare Province Youth Chairman Jim Kunaka denied
involvement by his party , saying Zvorwadza had threatened to shoot some
residents of the Mbare high-density suburb or township who besieged his
business
Jonga Kandemiiri | Washington
Zimbabwean human
rights activists Stenrick Zvorwadza, spokesman for Restoration of Human
Rights, arrested Saturday by police in Mbare for allegedly threatening
violence, was arraigned Monday, released on US$100 bail and remanded to
February 14.
Zvorwadza said he was arrested when he went to the Matapi
police station to report the harassment of his business by more than 80
members of the Chipangano youth group allegedly tied to ZANU-PF, threatening
to violently shut down his vending stand.
Zvorwadza told reporter
Jonga Kandemiiri that he was assaulted while in police custody, and that his
lawyer, Alec Muchadehama, and some members of the Joint Monitoring and
Implementation Committee, were barred by police from speaking with
him.
ZANU-PF Harare Province Youth Chairman Jim Kunaka denied involvement
by his party in the episode, saying that Zvorwadza had threatened to shoot
some residents of the Mbare high-density suburb or township who besieged his
business.
HARARE — Zimbabwe football authorities have suspended from the
national team some players implicated in a 2009 match-fixing scam in Asia,
an official said Tuesday.
Former Zimbabwe Football Association (ZIFA)
chief executive Henrietta Rushwaya sent the national team to play
unsanctioned friendlies in Thailand, Syria and Malaysia two years ago and a
betting syndicate allegedly fixed the results.
Rushwaya was later
fired in 2010.
"There were 80 players in all who took part in the games
and we are saying all those players who were involved in five games or more
should have nothing to do with the national team until they are cleared,"
ZIFA chief executive Jonathan Mashingaidze said.
"We can't have
players in the national team with issues to do with match-fixing."
He
added: "The players have not been banned yet, but we just want to let
justice take its course. The sentiment in Zimbabwe was that the team was
failing to qualify for major tournaments since we were using players who had
been tainted by this scandal."
He could not give the exact number of
players affected.
In August last year, ZIFA suspended three board
members, including a former national team player and a former referee, over
the scandal.
Zimbabwe are also under investigation by world football
governing body FIFA.
FIFA chief Sepp Blatter warned during a visit to
Harare last year that players and officials found guilty in the ongoing
probe would face life bans.
No tears for Nkosazana
Zumas failed bid for the AU’s top job
Clifford Chitupa Mashiri,
31/01/12
Clifford C Mashiri at the
South African Embassy, London on 21 Jan 2012
Zimbabweans should feel a
great sense of relief that South Africa’s Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, former wife of
President Jacob Zuma failed to make it to the African Union’s top post yesterday
in Addis Ababa.
Relief because Robert
Mugabe’s sidekick failed to get the AU leadership vote amid pressure from serial
political flip-flopper Jonathan Moyo for polls regardless of the need for a
level playing field.
Zanu-pf hardliners had been
desperate for a sympathetic voice at the African Union in addition to Jacob
Zuma’s security council role at the UN, in their push for early polls before a
referendum on a new constitution, reforming of, inter alia, the security sector,
electoral law, human rights law, media law, presidential powers and the voters
roll.
Contrary to assertions from
South Africa that Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma will vie for the African Union’s top
job in the next election in six months time after failing in her bid for the
post, neither she nor Jean Ping of Gabon will be eligible to run
then.
“Nothing stops us from
fielding the same candidate because she has shown or proven to be a formidable
candidate that the incumbent could not defeat,” South Africa’s International
Relations Minister Maite Nkoane Mashabane said in a statement
(SAPA/Bulawayo24.com, Loser
Dlamini Zuma to vie for AU top job again, 31/01/12).
One would have thought that
Minister Mashabane would have been properly briefed by her officials that
according to the rules of the African Union neither Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma nor
Jean Ping can stand again at the next election expected in July in
Malawi.
In any case, there is need
for younger candidates given that Ping is 69 and Zuma is 62, there is no sound
reason why the AU’s top post should necessarily go to people who are in the age
range for retirement and might not cope with the demands of geopolitics in the
fast moving information age.
Consequently, this leaves
the race wide open to fresh blood and probably more suitable candidates ideally
from pro-democracy countries like Kenya, Ivory Coast, Tunisia or the NTC’s Libya
in the same way former liberation movements were the ideal candidates in the
1970s and 80s.
Far from being a mere
Francophone and Anglophone issue, there are many plausible reasons
cutting–across language barriers, why the vote for Africa’s new chief was
indecisive.
Whereas Ping’s juggling of
the diverse views of the 54-member AU during the Libyan crisis may have cost him
votes especially among Gaddafi sympathisers like Zimbabwe and South Africa,
Nkosazana Zuma, was haunted by what
others see as her country’s ‘big brother’ attitude towards smaller
states.
“There is considerable fear
and resentment about South Africa’s role,” said Steven Friedman, a political
analyst and director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy (New York Times,
Vote for African Union’s Leader Hits Stalemate, 31/01/12).
Major African nations like
Nigeria and Kenya had reservations about giving so much power to South Africa,
while smaller nations feared for their interests.
Smaller countries allege
Zuma’s candidacy broke an unwritten rule that the continent’s dominant states do
not contest the leadership (Chicago Tribune, African Union Fails to elect new
chief, 30/01/12).
President Jacob Zuma has
been criticised for a weak foreign policy on Africa at a time when Iran and
China are courting Africa sparking suspicions of their true intentions.
Africans are wary ofChina’s real motives in donating a US$200m
new building to the African Union whenin September around 400 police used brute
force against protesters in Wukan, south of the country ‘beating some residents
and allegedly killing one child’ (The Telegraph, Chinese police besiege town and
cut off food supplies in bid to quell riots,
12/12/11).
As for Iran, events are
moving very fast with regards to its controversial nuclear programme which has
come under the spotlight of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Several African countries have viable uranium deposits needed for
enrichment.
Pretoria was criticised for blocking a visit by the Dalai Lama
to attend the 80th Birthday of South African hero Archbishop Desmond
Tutu. That snub inevitably caused a lot of disappointment and embarrassment in
political and civil society circles beyond Africa.
Despite attempts to claim
the gender issue and turning out to charm ahead of the AU vote with brochures in
English, French and Spanish, Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma failed to garner enough
support for the influential post.
Zimbabweans will not shed a
tear or two for Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma’s failure to secure the two thirds
majority required to win because of what is perceived as
her country’s taking sides
on the Zimbabwe crisis and appeasement of Mugabe.
A practical example is
ex-president Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma’s refusal to release to the Mail &
Guardian despite court orders, an explosive report that was compiled by South
African judges who were commissioned by Mbeki on the Zimbabwe election violence
of 2002.
In 2008 South African army
generals were commissioned by Thabo Mbeki to collect information and compile
another election violence report which is believed to implicate the Zimbabwe
military, but Pretoria is sitting on it as well.
The loser from the AU
stalemate would obviously be Robert Mugabe, who cut short his month-long leave
to fly to Addis Ababa to presumably canvass for the wrong candidate and early
elections in Zimbabwe despite firmly blocking reforms. Akanzwa butter! (Good for
him).
Keeping standards ...
Pupils at St Ignatius High School [Pix: Rudo
Nyangulu]
31/01/2012
00:00:00
by Petina Gappah I
GuernicaMag.com
Schools visit ... Petina Gappah
In this
piece from the GuernicaMag.com Writers Bloc project, a collection of essays about
education systems around the world, Petina Gappah revisits her childhood schools
in Zimbabwe:
IF ZIMBABWE were
human, the country would need more years of therapy than its 30 years of
independence. According to Foreign Policy, in 2010, Zimbabwe was fourth
on the “Failed State Index.”
In 2006, it was
declared to be the unhappiest place on earth—ahead of Zimbabwe on the “Happiness
Index” were countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, and North
Korea. In 2008, it had inflation rates not seen since the Weimar Republic:
prices of goods changed as customers walked to the tills.
By any measure,
Zimbabweans should just have given up, switched off what little lights remained
burning, and hightailed it to the nearest border.
Zimbabwe’s
collapse is jarring because it has been so fast. Particularly, in education,
where it once led all of Africa, Zimbabwe has had a dizzying fall. The papers
are full of stories of teachers at government schools threatening to strike, of
pupils being sent home for not paying school fees, of overcrowded classrooms and
poorly maintained schools.
At the beginning
of last year, I planned to write about the state of education in coalition
Zimbabwe. In September 2008, Zimbabwe woke to a new chapter in its history. For
the first time since independence, Zanu PF, the party of the rooster emblem, was
no longer cock of the walk. Robert Mugabe’s party entered into a power-sharing
arrangement with the MDC, the opposition party that has sworn to reverse the
economic decline.
Ministerial
portfolios were divvied up between the three parties to the coalition. The
Ministry of Education, or, to give it its full name, The Ministry of Education,
Sport, Art, and Culture, went to the smaller of the two MDC parties, and is
headed by David Coltart, a lawyer and senator from Bulawayo.
Senator Coltart is
known as one of the most accessible of the ministers. His door was open when I
walked in to tell him about my project, and to ask for his permission to visit
government schools.
My initial plan
had been to go to all of Zimbabwe’s ten provinces, and visit two primary schools
and two secondary schools in each province. I soon came to realize that
bureaucracy had not quite caught up with the reality of the new coalition
government. The head of the first government school I visited would not see me
because I did not have the authority of the provincial head.
“But the
Minister signed my letter,” I protested and produced the letter signed by
Senator Coltart.
Not good enough,
clearly.
“That letter was
not signed by the provincial director,” I was told.
I went to Chester
House in Harare to see the Provincial Director, a small man in an over-furnished
office who put a stamp on it, signed it, and wrote, “APPROVED” above his
signature, effectively approving his boss’s approval. After that, I had to see
the District Officer, a smiling woman with a complicated hairstyle who put down
her tea and biscuits to stamp the minister’s letter, appending her own approval
to the other two approvals.
A friend who works
closely with the Ministry of Education shrugs when I tell him this anecdote. He
explains that the Senator’s Permanent Secretary—said to be a staunch Zanu PF
supporter—is apparently involved in a war of attrition with his MDC minister,
almost, my source says, as though he does not want the minister to
succeed.
I decide to limit
my visits to the schools to which I have a personal connection: a writer
visiting her old schools to write about them, I reason, is an entirely different
thing to an unknown person walking into strange schools, even with ministerial
approval.
Besides, I am
lucky to have gone to five schools in Zimbabwe, six if I include the University
of Zimbabwe.
“Why so many?”
my photographer, Rudo Nyangulu asks.
I explain to her
that I am of the generation that started school in Rhodesia, continued in
Zimbabwe-Rhodesia and finished in Zimbabwe. Those were the days of social
mobility, of dismantled racial barriers. I did the first year of my primary
education at Chembira Government Primary School, did Grade 2 at Kundai
Government Primary School, and then did Grades 4 to 7 at Alfred Beit Primary
School before completing my secondary education at St. Dominic’s Secondary
School and St. Ignatius’ College. It is to these old schools that Rudo and I
turn in the company of our driver, Innocent.
A hopeful future ... Pupils
at Chembira Primary School [Pix: Rudo
Nyangulu]
My first school
was Chembira School, the first government primary school to be built in Glen
Norah, a black township established in the early 1970s. There were more children
than there were school places, which meant that about 80 pupils shared a
classroom, with a group of children coming to school in the mornings and another
in the afternoons. Until the classroom cleared, my classmates and I sat under a
tree with our teacher. “Hot seating” only ended when a new school opened the
following year.
I remark to the
deputy head that Chembira has the same number of toilets it had 30 years
ago.
“That’s when
they are working,” she says, ominously.
We visit the Grade
Zero classroom. It is the room that was once the library, and still has LIBRARY
written on the door. Efforts have gone into making it cheerful. The floor has
been carefully swept. Children learn to distinguish shapes from old boxes of
different sizes. The walls are decorated with collages made of pictures from
newspapers and magazines. It is woefully inadequate, and, at the same time,
heroic in a way that is heartbreaking.
“When the new
classroom block is built,” the headmistress says, “then this can be a library
again.
“But we have no
books,” she adds as an afterthought. “You see why we need
help?”
To understand what
has gone wrong at schools like Chembira requires an understanding of what it
used to do well. What Zimbabwe did particularly well in the first twenty years
of its life was to correct the racial injustice that had denied quality
universal education to the majority of the country’s black children: throughout
the history of the colony, state education was bottlenecked to ensure that fewer
and fewer blacks had access to education as they progressed up to tertiary
education.
Government schools
for whites, and to a lesser extent, those for Coloreds and Indians, had the best
resources, while the “Africans only” schools, the Group B schools like Chembira,
suffered from overcrowding, inadequately trained teachers and no resources. It
is no wonder that at independence, the government, and its first leader, Mugabe,
a teacher, considered it the chief priority, even ahead of land reform, to
respond to the thirst for education. But in the last ten short years of
Zimbabwe’s political and economic crisis, these hard won gains have been all but
lost.
Chishawasha is a
short drive from central Harare. It would be shorter still if the dust road from
the turn off at Enterprise Road were tarred. We crawl along the dust road. The
surrounding Shawasha Hills have become a fashionable new development, dotted
with new houses built with new money. The valley itself remains resolutely
rural: Innocent stops the car to let two small boys herd their cows along the
road.
Chishawasha is
Catholic Central, with four schools, a clinic, the regional seminary and a
cathedral all built on land that Rhodesia’s founder, Cecil John Rhodes, gave to
the Jesuits in 1890s. It is prime land. The school overlooks the old Valley of
the Millionaires—after the Federation of the two Rhodesias and Nyasaland
collapsed, its last Governor-General, Simon Ramsay, Lord Dalhousie, set up a
farm here.
We drive to St
Dominic’s Secondary School. Everything seems to be exactly the same. The
redbrick classrooms. The convent with its Dominican sisters. The school hall
where mass was held and where we sat exams. The statue of the Virgin in the
grotto. There is Sister Elizabeth, with her gentle face and German accent, and
there, Mr. Madubeko, the headmaster and my old science
teacher.
A highly selective
girls’ school, St Dominic’s was every parent’s dream. It offered a first class
education in an austere but nurturing Catholic environment, far from the
temptations of town. Daughters of the wealthy mixed with girls from poor rural
families, their common bond academic excellence.
“Is the school
still committed to educating girls from all backgrounds?” I ask my former
teachers.
“We really want
to educate poor children but we can’t educate anyone without money, no?” says
Sister Elizabeth
Madubeko confirms
this but clarifies that even though only those able to pay fees come to the
school, they aim to keep the fees low. The fees are currently less than US$400 a
term. Sister Elizabeth explains that in years when they got donations from
overseas, they could pay for girls who may have lost their parents and were
unable to continue.
The more I look,
the more I see changes. The library has moved to a room twice its former size.
There is a new A-Level block, built in 2001, which offers accommodation for 40
girls. St Dominic’s has received an impressive number of Secretary’s Bells; at a
hundred percent, the school consistently has the highest pass rate for A-Levels
in the country.
“We do not take
girls with less than 5 As at O-Level if they were here,” Sister Elizabeth says.
“And if they come from outside the school, they have to have 8
As.”
Madubeko bemoans
the current pass-rate of 90 percent at O-Level, the lowest it has been in ten
years. “When I was at St Dominic’s,” I remark, feeling smug, “The pass-rate was
100 percent.”
Madubeko sighs and
says that they are often under pressure to take girls who are not up to
standard. One of the girls tells me later that one of Zimbabwe’s top army
generals had a daughter here. An army truck drove up every Saturday to bring her
food, even though this was against the school rules. Madubeko is circumspect
about the kind of pressures he is under, saying only that these pressures
prevent a perfect pass rate.
The same faces I
crept past those many years ago, trying very hard not to attract any attention,
are still here, among them Sister Elizabeth, Sister Veronica, the deputy
headmaster and his wife, who teaches science, Mai Farai, the Librarian, and
Madubeko himself who has been here since 1975.
For the Dominican
nuns, it is clear: the convent, and so the school, is their home. “But the
others, why do the other teachers stay so long?” I ask.
Mr. Mutangara,
deputy head since 1987, laughs and says, “There is nowhere else to
go.”
Madubeko explains
it has been a stable home and a wonderful environment for his children who all
grew up in the valley. It also helps, he says, that the staff receives a better
salary than the ministry salary—it is topped up by money from fees. He becomes
wistful as he wonders whether his staying so long has been good or bad for the
school.
We move around the
school taking photographs and find girls hard at work. A class in social
geography is exploring the concept of equality under socialism. In the food and
nutrition class, the girls are learning to make a curry. In this same room, my
classmates and I were taught to make food meant for cold English winters,
shepherd’s pie and toad-in-the-hole, Yorkshire pudding and apple crumble. At the
end of the corridor is a literature room. There are five girls there now, with
books before them, discussing Measure for Measure.
Behind the
administration block is the tap from where we drank water in our cupped hands.
“A DAY IN SCHOOL IS A GAIN ON ETERNITY” says a notice on the board inside the
reception. Below this is a large poster outlining the school’s plans for the
next five years, the most ambitious being to build a new block of
classrooms.
When I tell the
deputy headmistress that I am an old pupil, she welcomes me with a hug of
delight, especially when I mention where I have been since 1978. This being
Zimbabwe, it turns out that she knows one of my aunts—they did their teacher
training together in the 70s.
Hot seating is
back again as there are simply too many children for the available
classrooms—1,315 in all. Glen Norah is in the catchment area of the Hopley Farm
informal settlement, she explains, which means that they have many children from
very poor families. The BEAM programme is important for them, the deputy head
says, and shows me a group of parents assisting in sorting through applications
in the staff room.
By the BEAM
programme, she means the “Basic Education Assistance Module,” a donor-funded
scheme that aims to ensure that children from poor families stay in school: it
is aimed at what its multilateral donors call OVCs—orphans and other vulnerable
children. They have their fees and levies paid for them and are supplied with
uniforms and stationery.
“But what about
children not covered under the BEAM? Would you expel children whose parents
cannot pay fees?’ I ask.
There have been
several stand-offs between schools and the Ministry, with the latter insisting
that schools cannot expel children for not paying fees, while schools point out
that without fees, they are unable to run.
In addition to the
government-set school fees of about US$20 for a term of three months, there is
the “development levy,” which varies from small amounts at the poorer schools to
hundreds, and even thousands, of dollars at the better-off schools. The levy is
charged directly by each School Development Association—the SDAs are made up of
parents and teachers. Faced with a perpetually broke government, the SDAs have
been the drivers of school development. In fact, the plan to build a new
classroom block at Chembira is an SDA project.
“We do not expel
children,” the deputy headmistress says. “You find that many such children have
just one parent, and so, even if they are not orphans exactly, they will be
covered somehow.”
She tells me that
the SDA levies at Chembira have enabled them to pay for two extra teachers, and
for their Traditional Dance coach. The school has won the country’s leading
Traditional Dance competition for school children. Last year, Chembira came top
in the whole country, she tells me proudly.
“We are doing
really well. We have an excellent coach,’ she beams, “Someone who really
believes in his job.”
Does the same
commitment extend to the classroom, I ask. Are their teachers as committed to
excellence as the dance coach?
“There are
challenges,’ she admits. “There are simply not enough teachers for all the
children.”
As we walk around
the school, I meet the two oldest teachers; they must have been there when I
was, I prod them eagerly for memories of my old teacher, but 1978 is too far in
the past.
Our tour of the
school coincides with break-time. The children, eager for any diversion, follow
us around. Rudo’s camera is like a magnet; they jostle to have their pictures
taken. As the deputy headmistress tries to keep the children at a distance, I
ask her about the pressures facing the schools. She tells me what I will hear at
the two other primary schools I will visit: that the Grade Zero classes are
adding pressure to already pressured schools.
In 2005, the
government introduced an Early Development class, ECD, informally called Grade
Zero. It was intended to address the reality that not all parents could afford
to send their children to crèches, which were all privately run and tended to be
expensive. The idea was that all children should, before the formal start of
primary school, be equipped with the social skills they need to start
school.
A wonderful
initiative in theory, but, as with many things in Zimbabwe, the devil was in the
implementation. The government did not build more classrooms to accommodate
Grade Zero children, who need toys, picture books and specialized learning
aids.
In the first few
years, there were no teachers who were properly qualified in early childhood
development. Many government schools were already struggling with too many
children, falling infrastructure and indifferent and unmotivated teachers, if
they were not absent. Grade Zero has thus added more children to schools without
accompanying improvements in infrastructure.
As we leave, I
take a look at the school’s vision statement on the notice board. One of the
aims of the school, according to this, is “preparation for life in all its
dimensions, its profound meaning and transformation beyond death to eternal
life.” There is no way of measuring whether the school achieves this. What it
achieves without question are stellar results: twenty-three years after I left,
St Dominic’s is clearly still one of the top schools in the
country.
Life
lessons ... Learning sewing at St Dominic's [Pix: Rudo
Nyangulu]
From St Dominic’s,
I went to St Ignatius College as one of the 40 girls at Zimbabwe’s finest Jesuit
school for boys. Our mission was partly to help the boys move with ease between
the all-boys environment of Form 1 to 4 to the co-educational A-Levels. With us,
they got used to girls before being unleashed on an unsuspecting world. But we
were there mainly because Mary Ward, a forward-thinking English nun who founded
the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, now called the Congregation of Jesus,
dreamed of setting up girls’ schools on the Jesuit model. The Mary Ward girls,
as we were called, shared classes with the boys.
We received a
first class education.
Since its
establishment in 1962, St Ignatius has educated generations of brilliant boys
from poor and modest backgrounds: better-off families in search of a Jesuit
education tend to send their sons to St. Ignatius’ posher brother school in
town, St. George’s College.
When I visit St
Ignatius with Rudo and Innocent, it is like stepping into the achingly familiar.
I was very happy here. The school is built on a hill, with the Chishawasha
valley on one side and a view of the Valley of the Millionaires from Mary Ward
House. Rich red earth is everywhere, at one with the red bricks of the
well-maintained buildings.
Father Roland von
Nidda, the rector, is expansive in his welcome. He takes us from classroom to
classroom. My visit inspires him to invite me to the Prize-Giving Day as a guest
of honour.
It is here that
I see my old school at its very best.
I speak to the
boys and girls about what the school meant to me, about the Jesuits priests and
Mary Ward sisters who taught me, about the fierce ambition they burned in me to
not only do exceptionally well but also, in the words of St Ignatius of Loyola,
to find a way to set the world on fire.
I tell them about
my little rebellions, abandoning Catholicism for Buddhism, only to find myself
as lonely as my headmaster Father Berridge had predicted: I would probably be
the only Buddhist in Zimbabwe, he had said.
“I also want to
be a Buddhist,” whispers a small Form 2 boy to me later, as I give out his
prize.
Father Von Nidda
emphasises in his speech that the school aims for a holistic
education.
Over tea, he tells
me that he wants to send into the world compassionate young men and women with
critical minds. “And they are so bright,” he says. “My goodness they are bright.
I do worry though that some of them take religion too
seriously.”
The prizes follow.
The sun hits my eyes as I give out certificate after certificate, for best
A-Level results, for the top ten in each class. There are school colours in
volleyball, swimming, netball, rugby, soccer, basketball and chess. It is
inspiring to see both the fierce competition and the pleasure in the pursuit of
excellence.
There is humour
and camaraderie in the competitiveness. Peels of ululation ring out as exultant
parents dance little jigs to celebrate their children. The teachers are just as
competitive. They receive prizes for every record they break.
As I hand out
their certificates and congratulate the A-level students who did exceptionally
well in both the Cambridge and Zimbabwe school examinations, I ask where they
are headed, and what they will read.
“I will do
medicine in South Africa,” says one.
“I am off to
York University in Canada,” says another.
They want to
study medicine and accountancy, law and engineering, architecture and actuarial
science.
“If I can’t go
anywhere else,” the former head girl, Nancy Kachingwe, tells me, “Then it will
have to be the University of Zimbabwe.”
Zimbabwe’s Prime
Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, likes to say that the real scope of the tragedy of
Mugabe’s most recent years in power is that he has destroyed not only what he
inherited at independence, but also what he built himself. My journey around my
childhood confirms that, far from being an enabler and builder, the government
has actually been an inhibitor and destroyer. The successful schools are those
where government interference is felt the least, private schools that, untainted
by government control, have managed to thrive.
Even in the
government schools, though, all is not quite lost. Individuals have managed to
make a difference, even against the odds; ordinary people like the headmaster
and teachers at Kundai; the engaged parents in the SDA at Chembira. Even Alfred
Beit, which fell the furthest of my previous schools, has barely hung on because
parents have agreed to pay more fees than government demands.
It is hard to
shake the sense I got that money has replaced race in Zimbabwe. In Rhodesia,
race determined whether a child was guaranteed a good education. In post-crisis
Zimbabwe, it is now class that is the determinant. It is the ability of the
parents to pay that determines whether their children get a good
education.
A Zimbabwean PhD
student has written a thesis that argues that this generation of children will
be less literate than their parents, a terrifying possibility that brings with
it the spectre of social upheavals to come.
In one respect,
the Zimbabwe of my education is the same Zimbabwe today. It is a country filled
with children who manage to find happiness in difficult circumstances, who make
toys out of bricks, who study in the light of candles, and who are filled with
imaginations and ambitions that are bigger than the collapse of their failed
state.
Petina
Gappah is a lawyer and writer. Her first book, An Elegy for
Easterly won the Guardian First Book Award in 2009 and was a
finalist for the Orwell Prize and the LA Times Book Prize. She currently lives
in Harare
Bill Watch 2/2012 of 29th January [AU Convention on Democracy Elections and Governance]
BILL WATCH 2/2012
[29th January 2012]
Both Houses are adjourned until Tuesday 28th February
2012
AU Convention on Democracy, Elections and Governance to Come into
Force without Zimbabwe
The AU Convention on Democracy, Elections and Governance will come
into force, for states which are party to it, on 15th February 2012, following
the deposit of Cameroon’s instrument of ratification.The Convention was adopted by the AU Heads of
State and Government on 30th January 2007 and has now been signed by 38 out of
54 African states, but ratified by only 15; so there are only 15 “States
parties”.Zimbabwe has neither signed
and ratified, nor acceded to the Convention.Only 3 out of 15 SADC states are parties to the Convention: Lesotho,
South Africa and Zambia.It seems
contradictory that Zimbabwe says it has a strong commitment to the AU, but has
not signed this convention.With
elections being talked about there is good reason to lobby MPs to press for
Zimbabwe to accede to it. [Electronic
version of Convention available from veritas@mango.zw]
Assembly Resolution on Clerk
Overruled by High Court
On 20th January Justice Bere
granted Clerk of Parliament Austin Zvoma an urgent interim order suspending
implementation of the MDC-T resolution against him passed by the House of
Assembly on 15th December after ZANU-PFmembers walked out
[see Bill Watch 56/2011 of 16th
December].The resolution called for
the appointment of committee to hear Mr Zvoma’s representations before reporting
back to the House on an appropriate penalty for the acts of misconduct cited in
the resolution.The judge pointed to the
failure by the movers of the motion to adhere to the principles of natural
justice before treating Mr Zvoma’s guilt as established.Being interim only, the court order freezes
further action against Mr Zvoma pending the determination of his main
application for clarification of the legal position.
Sitting Allowances for
Parliamentarians
Since Parliament adjourned in
mid-December members of the House of Assembly and Senators have been paid a lump
sum of $15 000 each towards the amounts owed to them for sitting allowances not
paid since the commencement of the present Parliament in 2008.Some legislators have complained that the
one-size-fits-all amount is unfair – over-generous to those who seldom attend
Parliament and less than what is owing to those who attend diligently.They point out that the agreement reached
between the legislators and the government late last year was that the allowance
arrears would be paid at the rate of $75 per sitting.The Minister of Constitutional
and Parliamentary Affairs has explained the $15 000 was merely a working figure, and that
shortfalls would be made up and overpayments recovered once Parliament had
confirmed the entitlement of each individual legislator.[Comment: A point not so far given publicity
is that the legal basis for payment of any amounts is shaky.Under the Parliamentary Salaries, Allowances
and Benefits Act members of Parliament are entitled only to those allowances
specified in regulations made by the President under the Act.The current regulations specify now
meaningless amounts in old Zimbabwe dollars: SI 401A/1999 as last amended by SIs
148 and 216/2003.The regulations need
to be updated in order to put the payment of Parliamentary salaries and
allowances on a proper legal footing.]
Expiry of Terms of Office
of Security Force Chiefs
With the expiry of the
current statutory terms of office of the Commissioner-General of Police and the
Defence Force and Army commanders imminent, both MDC-T and MDC have, correctly,
reiterated that under Article 20.1.3(p) of the GPA the President needs the
consent of the Prime Minister before exercising the power given to him by the
Defence Act and the Police Act to extend these appointments for up to one
year.Previous extensions have been
granted without such consent.
18th AU Summit: 23rd to 30th January 2012: Addis
Ababa
Meetings at ambassadorial level [the Permanent Representatives
Committee] on 23rd and 24th January and at Ministerial level [the Executive
Council]on 26th and 27th January, led
up to the Assembly of Heads of State and Government on 29th and 30th
January.The theme for the
Summit is "Boosting Intra-African Trade.The Zimbabwe situation is not a formal agenda item.
New AU Chair:A new AU chairperson for
the year has been elected – Benin’s President Yayi.
AU Commission ElectionsThe Commission is the secretariat of the AU, with a chairperson and
deputy chairperson, and eight each commissioners, each heading a department of
the secretariat.The term of office of the current members of the Commission ends this
month.Before the Summit end the Heads
of State and Government will be to elect a new Commission chairperson and deputy
chairperson to replace outgoing office-holders Jean Ping of Gabon and Erastus
Mwencha of Kenya, both of whom are candidates for re-election.There is one other candidate for the
chairperson of the Commission:that is
Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma of South Africa, currently Minister of Home
Affairs and ex-Minister of Foreign Affairs.The eight other members of the Commission will also be chosen today,
by the Ministers of the Executive Council.Two Zimbabweans are standing for election: Ms Hesphina Rukato, for Commissioner of Political Affairs; Ms Rudo Mabel
Chitiga, for Commissioner for Social Affairs.
Peace and Security Council:10 members of the council
will be elected by the Assembly of Heads of State and Government to assume
office on 1st April.Zimbabwe’s 3-year
term of office on the council ends on 31st March 2013.
Status of Bills as at 23rd
January 2012
[Electronic versions of these Bills availablefrom veritas@mango.zw]
Bills passed by Parliament
awaiting Presidential assent/gazetting as Acts
Small Enterprises Development
Corporation [SEDCO] Amendment Bill [sent
to President’s Office by Parliament on 30th September
2011]
Deposit Protection
Corporation Bill [sent to President’s
Office by Parliament on 8th December 2011]
[Note: Section 51(2) of the Constitution says that when a Bill is presented
to the President for assent he must either assent or withhold his assent within
21 days; if assent is withheld the Bill must be sent back to Parliament.The 4-month delay in movement on the SEDCO
Amendment Bill needs to be officially explained.]
Bill awaiting Second Reading
in the House of Assembly
National Incomes and Pricing Commission Amendment Bill
Bills gazetted and awaiting
presentation
Older Persons Bill [gazetted 9th September]
Urban Councils Amendment Bill [NEW
electronic version now available containing the Bill as gazetted by Parliament
on 16th December]
Lapsed Bills from previous
session awaiting restoration to the Order Paper
Public Order and Security [POSA] Amendment Bill [Private Member’s
Bill]
Electoral Amendment Bill
Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission Bill.
Government Gazette
[Please note electronic copies of these are not
available]
Local commercial radio broadcasting licences – application
deadline:GN 14/2012 is a reminder
that the deadline for applications to reach the Broadcasting Authority is
Tuesday 31st January.13 licences are on
offer, one for each of Harare, Bulawayo, Gweru, Masvingo, Chinhoyi, Bindura,
Gwanda, Marondera, Lupane, Plumtree, Kariba, Victoria Falls and Beitbridge.
Air travellers – another departure fee:SI 7/2012 imposes a new
“Aviation Infrastructure Development Fund fee” payable by passengers departing
from aerodromes, whether on a domestic flight [$5] or an international flight
[$15].Airlines must levy the fee on all
tickets issued on and after 1st February 2012.
Norton Town Council Market and Trading By-laws:SIs 8 and 9/2012 enact new
by-laws.The trading by-laws require 80
different types of businesses to hold annual trading permits, the permit fee
being $40.
Importation of second-hand underclothing:In Bill Watch 1/2012 of 2nd
January SI 150/2011 was said to “ban” the importation of this type of article,
repeating the official explanatory note in the SI itself.In fact, as the Minister of Finance has since
pointed out, the SI, which was gazetted by the Minister of Industry and
Commerce, did not impose a total ban.But the practical effect is similar: second-hand underclothing cannot now
be imported under the Open General Import Licence; each importation instead
requires an import licence issued by the Ministry of Industry and Commerce.And the Minister of Finance’s SI 159/2011
increased the customs duty on worn clothing.
Collective bargaining agreements have been gazetted: on the 6th January for the communications and
allied services industry [SI 1/2012], on 13th January for the agricultural
industry [SIs 2 and 3/2012], and on 20th January for welfare and educational
institutions [SI 6/2012].
Pension and provident funds registration: SI 4/2012 adjusts monetary amounts in section 3 of the principal
regulations [SI 323/1991] which deals with applications for the registration of
funds.
Veritas makes every effort to ensure reliable information, but cannot
take legal responsibility for information supplied
Bill Watch - Parliamentary Committees Series - 30th January 2012 [Meetings Open to Public 31st January to 2nd February]
BILL WATCH
PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEES SERIES
[30th January 2012]
Committee
Meetings Open to the Public: 31st January to 2nd
February
The meetings listed below will be open to members of the
publicas observers only, not as participants,
i.e. members of the public can listen but not speak.The meetings will be held at Parliament in
Harare; the public entrance on Kwame Nkrumah Ave between 2nd and 3rd
Streets.
Note: This bulletin is based on the latest information released by
Parliament on 30th January.But, as
there are sometimes last-minute changes to the schedule, persons wishing to
attend a meeting should avoid possible disappointment by checking with the
relevant committee clerk [see below] that the meeting is still on and still open
to the public.Parliament’s telephone
numbers are Harare 700181 and 252936.If
attending, please use the Kwame Nkrumah Ave entrance to Parliament.IDs must be
produced.
Tuesday 31st January at 10 am
Portfolio Committee: Foreign Affairs, Regional Integration and
International Trade
Oral evidence from the Minister of Regional Integration and
International Cooperation on the tripartite free trade
area
Committee Room No. 3
Chairperson: Hon MukanduriClerk: Mr
Chiremba
Thursday 2nd February at 10 am
Portfolio Committee: Agriculture, Water, Lands and Resettlement
Oral evidence from the Grain Marketing Board [GMB] on beneficiaries
of the 2011/12 input scheme and the GMB’s level of
indebtedness
Committee Room No. 4
Chairperson: Hon JiriClerk: Ms
Mudavanhu
Apology
Veritas regrets that late receipt of information from Parliament
prevented the circulation of details of four open committee meetings that took
place this morning and afternoon.
Veritas makes every effort to ensure reliable information, but cannot
take legal responsibility for information supplied
Bill Watch 3/2012 of 31st January [Call for Input on draft Public Finance Management Regulations]
BILL WATCH 3/2012
[31st January 2012]
Public Finance Management
[PFM] Regulations – Draft for Discussion
The new Public Finance Management [PFM] Regulations have been
drafted.New regulations are
necessary to provide the detailed rules to flesh out the broad principles laid
down by the PFM Act.These draft
regulations are drawn up by the Minister of Finance under the PFM Act, which
replaced the old Audit and Exchequer Act and State Loans and Guarantees
Act.The Ministry of Finance has
circulated the draft to its known stakeholders and Veritas has permission to
circulate it more widely.[Electronic
version of draft regulations available from veritas@mango.zw.Also available: electronic version of PFM
Act.]
Comment
welcome
Constructive comments and suggestions would be welcomed by the
Ministry of Finance, and should be submitted as soon as possible to the Deputy
Accountant General, Edwin M Zvandasara,
Ministry of Finance, new Government Complex, Samora Machel Avenue between
3rd and 4th Streets; telephone 04 793782; fax 04 250615; email ezvandasara@yahoo.co.uk
More about the Draft
Regulations
The lengthy draft – 77
pages, 12 Parts, 282 sections – covers in great detail aspects of public finance
management, including annual Budget preparation.Part headings and content are as
follows:
Part IPreliminary
This Part contains definitions and lays down the purpose and scope of
the regulations.They will apply to
Ministries, public and constitutional entities, and local authorities.
Part IIRoles,
Responsibilities and Powers
This Part outlines the responsibilities of the Minister of Finance,
other Ministers, local authority councils and officials, CEOs of public
entities and constitutional
entities, and permanent secretaries of Ministries.There are strict rules for delegation of
powers and responsibilities.
This important Part spells out a a detailed timetable for every stage
of the preparation of the annual Budget, e.g., the Budget Strategy Paper to be given to
Parliament and public by 31st July and
Budget to be presented to Parliament by 1st November.It also lists the Budget documents that must
be provided to Parliament and the public: on the Internet on the same day as the
Budget and in printed form as soon as possible.
Part VRevenue and
Expenditure Management
This
Part goes into such matters as the responsibility of receivers of revenue and
accounting officers, payment of salaries and wages.There is a statement of the principles
according to which official fees and charges should be fixed, including
reference to the cost of providing a service and its value to those receiving
it, and prior consultation with those affected.
Part VICash Management and
Banking
This
Part contains rules designed to ensure prompt receipt in the Consolidated
Revenue Fund of all revenue.For
example, ZIMRA
must deposit its takings in the relevant CRF accounts every day.Ministries, and public and constitutional
entities cannot have bank accounts with overdraft facilities.
Part VIIAsset
Management
This
Part covers asset recording,
valuation and reporting; disposal and leasing of assets; compliance with ethical
standards.
Part VIIILiability
Management
This Part covers management of losses and claims; loans, guarantees
and other State commitments; and money and property held in trust.
Part IXAccounting and
Reporting Requirements
This Part deals with accounting standards and records, use of
suspense accounts, retention of financial information, the preparation of
reports by Ministries, reporting to Parliament by the Ministry of Finance.
Part XInternal Audit and
Internal Control
This Part provides for audit committees and the responsibilities of
internal auditors.
Part XI:Accountability
Frameworks
This
Part goes into detail on financial requirements for local authorities and
State-owned enterprises, corporate plans, and reporting by and review of
Ministries, local authorities, public and constitutional entities and
State-owned enterprises.
Part XIIEnforcement
This
Part deals with investigation of allegations of financial misconduct and the
imposition of sanctions by the Ministry of Finance.It provides for consultation with the
relevant Parliamentary committee before the Ministry of Finance invokes
sanctions [e.g., withholding of funds] against Ministries or public or
constitutional entities.The Ministry of
Finance will be obliged to publish [on the Internet]:
·the name, position, offence and sentence for each person convicted of
an offence under the PFM Act
·where sanctions are applied against a Ministry or a public or
constitutional entity, the name of the Ministry, public orconstitutional entity, the issue giving rise
to the imposition of the sanction, and the sanction applied.
Veritas makes every effort to ensure reliable information, but cannot
take legal responsibility for information supplied
Court Watch 1/2012 [Opening of the 2012 Legal Year]
COURT WATCH
1/2012
[January
2012]
Opening
of the 2012 Legal Year
With
the opening of the new legal year there is a Supreme Court and High Court
Calendar ready for 2012 and also a Labour Court Calendar for 2012, both
published in the Government Gazette.[Both
available from
veritas@mango.zw].The
calendars
give the dates of the courts terms and vacations and also the dates of the High
Court Circuits to be held in provincial centres.
The
customary opening ceremonies for the new legal year were held on 9th January,
taking the form of special sittings attended by judges and invited guests,
including, in Harare, the Minister of Justice and Legal Affairs, the President
of the Senate and Speaker of the House..This bulletin summarises key aspects of the speeches, including
quotations of important statements, given at these ceremonies by Deputy Chief
Justice Luke Malaba in Harare, and Judge President George Chiweshe in
Bulawayo.[Complete
speeches by Justice Malaba and Justice Chiweshe available from
veritas@mango.zw][Note:comments on the speeches are given below the
summary.]
A
Responsive and Accountable Judiciary
Justice
Malaba started by telling his audience that to retain public confidence the judiciary must
be a judiciary of its times.“It
must take account of the needs of the changing society within which it holds
office. It must absorb the light from the society it serves whilst remaining
strong, transparent and humble in its operations.”The opening of the legal year was an opportunity for the judiciary
to“account to the people by giving information
on changes that have taken place in the administration of justice, highlighting
the problems encountered in the past year and suggesting solutions for
them.”
Code
of Ethics for Judicial Officers
Perhaps
the most significant aspect of both speeches was their announcement of a Code of
Ethics for judicial officers.Justice
Malaba explained that in times past formal codes of conduct for judicial
officers had not been considered necessary in Zimbabwe and other countries.The attitude had been that it was enough that
judges had to work in public and give reasons for their decisions which were
subject to public scrutiny and review by higher courts, and that the judicial
oath was sufficient guarantee of ethical conduct.Since about 1990, however, judiciaries the
world over had begun to accept the advantages of formal written codes of conduct
to guide and regulate judicial conduct, both for judges themselves and as a
means of reassuring the public that that “decisions are not the result of an individual judge’s personal
preferences and biases.Justice must not
only be blind but also appear to be blind”.In Zimbabwe the subject had been the
subject of long debate, with the judiciary finally adopting a code of ethics on
2nd December 2011.
Code not inconsistent with
judicial independenceJustice Malaba stressed that the code is
“a
regulation of the judiciary by the judiciary”,not imposed from outside.Explaining that the code is
not inconsistent with judicial independence, he made the point that
the“premise underlying the grant and protection of the right to judicial
independence is that it is in the interest of justice.It is also vital that the independence be
vested in persons who will behave in an ethical manner in their judicial and
personal lives.The code of conduct is
therefore intended to promote and not inhibit the independence of the judicial
officers in the discharge of their judicial functions.To be respected, the independence must be
seen as existing to protect the impartiality of judicial decisions and not the
personal interest of the judicial officers.”
Code
not applicable to magistracyThe code will apply only to the judges of the
Supreme Court and the High Court and the presidents of the Labour Court and
Administrative Court.
What
will the Code cover?According to Justice Malaba, the code
contains detailed specific rules of conduct and constitutes “a
definitive code of personal behaviour”,
providing guidance to judicial officers“about
what is and is not acceptable conduct”.It also provides a procedure for receiving,
investigating, hearing and determining complaints from the public about
misconduct by judicial officers.
Judicial
Service Budget
Justice
Malaba said there had been a marked improvement in the funding of court
operations since the Judicial Service Commission gained control of the budget
for the Judicial Service at the beginning of 2011. This followed the bringing into force of the
Judicial Service Act [available
from veritas@mango.zw]
the previous year.In Bulawayo Justice
Chiweshe also referred to this improvement, pointing out that when the Ministry
of Justice and Legal Affairs controlled the budget the Ministry’s priorities did
not always coincide with those of the judiciary. "The
control of our budget has enabled us to set our own priorities in terms of what
activities we believe will enhance our operations, and, ultimately have a
positive impact on justice delivery.For
example, the supply of basics such as stationery and office provisions has
dramatically improved. Magisterial circuit courts that had been abandoned due to
unavailability of vehicles have now been resuscitated."
Delays
and Backlogs in Justice Delivery
Both
judges addressed this subject, with Justice Malaba covering the situation in the
Supreme Court and the High Court, Harare, and the Labour and Administrative
Courts, and Justice Chiweshe concentrating on the High Court,
Bulawayo.
Supreme
CourtJustice Malaba said there had actually been a
drop in the number of appeals and constitutional cases reaching the Supreme
Court.The court had disposed of all the
cases set down for hearing.Many cases
lodged had not, however, been set down for hearing, because they were not yet
ready.The court had also decided to
speed up the disposition rate by wherever possible giving its decision and
reasons for judgment at the end of a hearing – “unless
the complexity of the legal questions involved requires that more time be taken
for reflection and collation of reasons for judgment”.This
meant that reserved judgments are now the exception rather than the norm.
High
Court, HarareJustice Malaba described the situation as a
“cause
for concern”,
with an increase of 33% in the number of cases filed and a “disappointing”
disposition rate.He discussed in
critical terms such problems as a disproportionate number of cases being
postponed without a hearing and cases heard but not decided, and insufficient
and ineffective use of the pre-trial conference mechanism – and concluded that
the solution was to have “all
those concerned in litigation to put more hours in the hearing and determination
of cases”.He accordingly dismissed suggestions for the
appointment additional judges, saying:“Until we can show that no other group of men and women assembled
could put any better effort to clear the backlog of the cases it would be
difficult to justify the appointment of additional judges whilst maintaining the
low disposition rates revealed by the statistics.”The situation in Harare compared unfavourably
with that in Bulawayo.
High
Court, BulawayoJustice Chiweshe described the clearance rate
in civil cases as satisfactory.The
disposition of appeals was hampered by delays in preparing the records of the
proceedings in the lower courts.Major
general problems were too few courtrooms [only 3 courtrooms for 5 judges, making
speedy disposition of cases difficult], a disturbing deficit in support staff
and equipment, such as the High Court building being without a telephone
switchboard for five years.
Need
to increase magistrates court civil jurisdictionJustice Chiweshe called for an urgent upward
review of the present jurisdictional ceiling of $2 000 for magistrates court
civil cases, suggesting that some of the increased High Court workload could be
attributed to this factor.Justice
Malaba, too, mentioned the need to balance High Court and magistrates court
civil jurisdiction “to ensure that only those cases that
deservedly fall within the jurisdiction of the High Court find their way
there”.
Labour
CourtJustice Chiweshe said this court had an
ever-increasing case load with which the current 12 Presidents could not cope,
despite their being obviously hard-working.There was accordingly justification for an increase in their
number.
Problems Attributed to
Litigants/Legal Practitioners
Justice Malaba complained
that the Supreme Court’s increased number of chamber applications was partly
attributable to failure by legal practitioners to comply with the time-limits
for noting appeals as laid down by the rules of court.He also said that the High Court statistics
suggested a misuse by legal practitioners of the procedure of urgent chamber
applications.Justice Chiweshe said that
only 25% of criminal appeals from magistrates courts were actually pursued by
the appellants, suggesting that a number of appeals were noted purely for the
purpose of securing bail for the appellant.
Tribute to Retired Justice
Wilson Sandura
Justice Malaba also paid
tribute to Justice Sandura, who retired at the end of July 2011 on attaining the
compulsory retirement age of 70 stipulated in the Constitution.
Veritas
Comments
Code of ethics not yet
availableThe
text of the Code has not been officially released because it still requires the
final approval of the Judicial Service Commission, which will incorporate the
code in a set of regulations made under sections 18 and 25 of the Judicial
Service Act.Section 25 requires the
Commission to get the approval of the Minister of Justice and Legal Affairs
before gazetting the regulations in a statutory instrument that will give the
Code binding legal force.A
guide to what to expect in the Code appears in section 18 of the Judicial
Service Act, which envisages a code covering:
“(a)the requirement of strict
impartiality of judicial officers when performing their
duties;
(b)the requirement of judicial officers to
discharge duties with propriety without being influenced
by‑
(i)any partisan interest, or public clamour or
fear;
(ii)family, personal, social, political or other
interests;
(c)the requirement of judicial officers not to
make any public comment that may affect or may reasonably be construed to affect
the outcome of any proceedings or impair their fairness, or make any comment
that might compromise a fair trial or hearing;
(d)the prohibition or limitation of gifts to
judicial officers or to members of their families residing with them that may
influence or reasonably be construed to influence the execution of the duties of
judicial officers;
(e)the definition of any other corrupt practices
or acts of improper behaviour on the part of judicial officers.”
Veritas
will make the code of ethics for judges available when it is
gazetted.
Code
of ethics for magistratesA code for magistrates is also needed and the
Judicial Service Commission have said they are working on this.
Administration
of Judicial Service budgetUnder section 10 of the Judicial Service Act
the Secretary of the Commission is the accounting officer for the Judicial
Service.
Comparison between Harare
and Bulawayo clearance ratesThe Bulawayo High Court clearance rate is
satisfactory in spite of too few court rooms, but there have been complaints
about long delays in the Harare High Court.The clear implication of Justice Malaba’s remarks about the Harare delays
is that all concerned, including the judges, need to work harder.
Supreme Court
delaysSome may feel that Justice Malaba went too
easy on the Supreme Court.There was no
mention of important cases in which decisions were given a long time ago but
reasons have not been furnished, of which the Jestina Mukoko case decided
in September 2009, is but one example.]
Transcription
of court recordsAppeals cannot be heard without a written
record of the proceedings in the lower court.Delays in transcription hold up the setting down and hearing of appeals
in both the High Court and Supreme Court.This is a serious problem of many years’
standing.
Magistrates’ jurisdiction in
civil casesRaising the $2 000 jurisdictional ceiling
[i.e. the value of the claim in dispute] for magistrates court civil
cases, as suggested by both
judges, is relatively simple and does
not require an Act of Parliament.It can
be implemented by a statutory instrument gazetted by the Minister of Justice and
Legal Affairs in terms of the Magistrates Court Act.
Justice
SanduraJustice Malaba’s tribute was an overdue
public acknowledgment of Justice Sandura’s immense contribution to Zimbabwean
jurisprudence during a judicial career spanning 28 years.
Veritas
makes every effort to ensure reliable information, but cannot take legal
responsibility for information supplied.
