Comment from The Zimbabwe Independent, 8 December

International Community No Longer Amused By Mugabe

Harare - President Mugabe was "not amused" by a "lecture" from UNDP administrator Mark Malloch Brown on the rule of law last week, the official media informs us. That's perhaps because the international community is "not amused" by Mugabe's contempt for the law. Even President Olusegun Obasanjo felt the need to remind our wayward leader that it was not colonial laws he was flouting but his own. "What I think the Zimbabwe government should do is to strictly follow the law that is already in place," he told the press after he and President Thabo Mbeki met Mugabe at State House last Thursday.

Despite energetic attempts to convince the public that other countries were showing "solidarity" with Zimbabwe on the land issue, it seems an international consensus has emerged - which includes the region - that while land reform is an important policy aim, it should not be attained by threats and lawlessness. Malloch Brown emphasised the need for consensus with internal stakeholders while Obasanjo stressed the need for Zimbabwe to find common cause with Britain and the wider international community. Mugabe is stuck up a cul-de-sac of his own making, it would appear. And all those appointed to rescue him - Mbeki, Bakili Muluzi, Kofi Annan - are washing their hands of the problem. An exercise commenced at the Victoria Falls mini- summit in April has come to nought, all because the government has proved impervious to reason.

It was a serious own-goal for Justice minister Patrick Chinamasa to have declared in the same week regional leaders and the UNDP chief were visiting Harare for crucial talks on the land issue that the government was free to pick and choose which laws it would obey. This scuppered any bridge-building and obliged Obasanjo, Mbeki and Malloch Brown to speak to Mugabe in the unambiguous terms he now says he took such exception to. The three leaders did not come to "amuse" him. They came to read him the Riot Act. Any country that refuses to obey its own courts or follow its own rules can hardly expect international respect or co-operation whatever the historical injustices it claims.

Which exposes the fundamental flaw in Chinamasa's ill-advised attack on members of the judiciary. The judiciary is there to interpret and uphold the laws of the land. In their recent judgements, the laws they were defending, whether on citizenship (1984) or land (1992 and 2000), have been passed by Zanu PF. The government is being required not to abide by some colonial edict, but by its own legislative enactments - one just a few months old! This point appears lost on ministers who have been only too happy to use colonial laws such as the Law and Order (Maintenance) Act to settle personal scores with critics.

But what is so egregious about Chinamasa's assault on the judiciary is the personal nature of the remarks made, especially when it now transpires he invented much of the information he used in his Nyanga speech. Justice George Smith, one of those under fire for being at the "core" of the Smith regime, says Chinamasa knowingly made false allegations against him and Justice Adam. Nearly every "fact" cited by Chinamasa in his curriculum vitae of Smith turned out to be wrong, Smith points out. He provided the correct details to an independent paper this week. They would have taken little effort to corroborate if Chinamasa had wanted to do so.

This is of some significance as the state media gave such prominence to Chinamasa's allegations and Information minister Jonathan Moyo is threatening to take legal steps against the free media for, among other things, "malicious" and "defamatory" remarks about people in the public spotlight. Moyo is proposing to act against papers which have accumulated lawsuits and public complaints. This is all very convenient of course. Those papers that have been bold enough to do their job in exposing crime and corruption at the highest levels will be penalised while those that have betrayed their calling by remaining supine on the misdemeanours of our leaders will be spared. But what does Moyo propose to do about ministers who knowingly make false statements about judges in order to punish them for upholding the rights of citizens exposed to Zanu PF's programme of arbitrary and illegal farm seizures? Justice George Smith, it will be recalled, has called for investigations into the VIP housing scam and the looting of the War Victims Compensation Fund.

Chinamasa claims his government is fulfilling some historic agenda. In fact its proposals on land were rejected by Zimbabwean voters in two democratic tests this year. The only historic agenda it is fulfilling is one that has impoverished and discredited Zimbabwe. Are the courts expected to endorse that? We can appreciate Chinamasa's need to bark when his master tells him to. But at a time when Moyo is proposing to muzzle newspapers that have exposed Zanu PF's criminal career, it seems rather inappropriate for a minister to commit all the offences Moyo complains of and get away with it! Are we prepared to live with this double standard? Of course not. The Zimbabwean public expects newspapers to do their duty by exposing ministerial hypocrisy and mal-administration. They certainly expect newspapers to blow the whistle when ministers abuse the law and then attack those who the constitution has designated as the law's protectors.

This is misgovernance writ large. The law in any society is designed to prevent tyranny and anarchy. Zimbabwe now suffers from a fatal combination of the two. That, in part, was the point Malloch Brown made to Mugabe last week.

The government appears not to want massive inflows of international aid for land reform in return for an orderly redistribution programme. It would prefer to penalise the rural constituency it claims to care so much about. If Zimbabwe does not address the concerns of the UNDP and others it will forfeit international goodwill altogether. Nobody wants to co-operate with a rogue state. That in turn will compound the economic crisis we are going through and cause social unrest. At some point the government should care about this because it will have a political cost. Mass action, when it comes, may not be the organised sort favoured by the MDC. And the National Reaction Force can't provide a permanent defence to persistent miscreants who trade on a false view of what the nation wants.

From The Mail & Guardian (SA), 8 December

People power gains ground in Africa

Luanda - Human rights gained ground in several southern African countries in the past year, an annual report by New York-based Human Rights Watch said this week. The advocacy group's report suggested the region's move to democracy looked sustainable and that globalisation and Internet communication were major forces behind the changes. "To the degree that developments mirrored a change in the public's state of mind, and a perception that they could influence the composition of a government and its policies, it appeared that the human rights advances would endure," the report said.

Zimbabweans defeated a government-sponsored constitution in February, then in June only narrowly elected a ruling party, once thought unassailable, despite widespread violence and intimidation in the run-up to the polls. "The phenomenal transition in Zimbabwe was the most dramatic illustration of a yearning for democracy and human rights and of the dogged determination of civil society actors to engineer and orchestrate reform," the report said. "They ... pulled off a people-power revolution that achieved astonishing gains in a short span of time," it said.

Zambia was noted for opening a World Bank meeting to human rights and civil society observers for the first time. But other abuses "undermined the more meaningful economic reforms," the report said. Pretoria passed four acts required under South Africa's 1996 constitution, including measures promoting equality and access to information. But South Africa remained racked by "shockingly high" crime rates. "Violence against women, including sexual violence, remained a very serious problem," the report said. South Africa had one of the world's highest incarceration rates with an estimated 416 inmates per 100 000 citizens. The prison system suffered from prisoner-on-prisoner rape and overcrowding. In April it held 170 000 inmates in accommodation for 100 000.

The report had high marks for Mozambique. "Despite being pummelled by cyclone-driven floods...and severe tensions spawned by the 1999 December presidential and parliamentary elections, Mozambique was once again on its feet with the fastest-growing economy in the world." Mozambique's Portuguese colonial cousin, Angola, has not fared as well. The bulk of its human rights abuses centred around the 25-year civil war between Luanda and UNITA.