LSZ organises workshop on ‘combating torture’ Herald 25 August 2006

By Caesar Zvayi

THE Law Society of Zimbabwe (LSZ) has organised "a training workshop on ways of combating torture", effectively entering into advocacy work which is not part of its core business.

Questions have been raised over the organisation’s new pursuit, with some grassroots members expressing concern over the legality of the organisation’s actions.

The three-day workshop — to be held under the theme "Practical Ways of Combating Torture through Legal and Medical Redress" — will run from August 31 to September 2, and is expected to bring together the "who’s who" of opposition politics at home and from the region.

The LSZ, the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) and the Southern African Development Community Lawyers’ Association (SADCLA) will jointly run the workshop.

The partnership has also raised eyebrows as the LSZ appears to be running its affairs through a subordinate organisation.

The get-together, which comes just a week before the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York next month, appears to be designed to set the agenda for opposition groups ahead of the summit.

Such gatherings have been used to come up with reports aimed at having Zimbabwe on the UN agenda for alleged human rights abuses.

LSZ president Mr Joseph James said there was nothing wrong in embarking on advocacy work, citing sections 52 and 53 of the Legal Practitioners Act that he said covered such activities.

‘‘Section 52 and 53 of the Legal Practitioners Act can give you an answer to that question (on the legality). In my opinion, the real problem is that the LSZ has not been doing much advocacy work," he said.

Section 52 of the Act, however, deals with membership of the LSZ while section 53 covers the objects and powers, but is silent on advocacy.

The Permanent Secretary for Information and Publicity, Cde George Charamba, said the workshop marks a change of direction in the operations of the LSZ.

‘‘It’s clear there is an insidious redrawing of the mission of the LSZ in the direction of political activism. Look at the logo of the letter of invitation — the LSZ has been made a sibling of governance NGOs like the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, which means a sibling of an institution that could, one day, appear before it either directly or through its members.

‘‘So when the regulator becomes an equivalent of the client there is a serious problem. This is part of a grand strategy of politicising professional bodies and NGOs in support of the MDC,’’ he said.

An LSZ member, who declined to be named, said the drive towards opposition advocacy appears to have been influenced by external funding the organisation has been receiving, a development Mr James confirmed by naming the SADCLA among the benefactors.

‘‘Our own members basically fund us. We also get money from people who are sympathetic to us and sometimes from the Sadc Lawyers’ Association,’’ he said.

Coincidentally, the SADCLA is sustained by grants from some Western countries. A grant from the Swedish International Development Agency established the organisation in 1999, and another grant enabled it to set up a permanent secretariat in Gaborone, Botswana where it has been working closely with subversive groups like the Botswana Civil Society Coalition on Zimbabwe.

The workshop, will not be the first time the ZLHR, LSZ and the SADCLA have come together in a project aimed at drawing attention to Zimbabwe, as the threesome also corroborated on a similar symposium in September 2004 that focused on alleged excesses in Zimbabwe and Swaziland.