Lawyers’ body fights for return of Rhodesia Sunday Mail 6 August 06

AFRICAN FOCUS By Tafataona P. Mahoso
Our African Focus instalments for July 9, 16 and 23 2006 dwelt on the history, economics and propaganda of devaluation and on the need for African leaders, African institutions, African intellectuals, African academics and journalists to engage in revaluation research which is required in order to reclaim and revalue African society and its assets.

Among the institutions which on paper would be expected to lead in this process of reclamation and revaluation is the Law Society of Zimbabwe (LSZ).

This would be so because all over the world and throughout modern history, great societies and great economies have found their breakthroughs or turning points through political revolutions underpinned by appropriate changes in values, in law, in legal education and legal practice.

It is in this context that Zimbabweans who accept the call to reclaim and revalue African society and its assets must also face the fact that the leadership of the LSZ is still fighting either for the restoration of the Rhodesian past or at least for the foreign-sponsored regime change project to reverse the African revolution.

What is the basis for making such an allegation? We cite a few illustrations:

The current leaders of the LSZ have been harassing legal practitioners with whom they disagree ideologically, especially those lawyers who have participated in or who accept and celebrate the achievements of the Second and Third Chimurenga.

Using Rhodesian and neo-Rhodesian law firms, leaders of the LSZ have been making efforts to deregister African lawyers who have benefited from the African land reclamation movement, accusing them of theft of property and of ethnic cleansing.

In March 2005, leaders of the LSZ issued a prejudicial and prejudiced statement condemning the parliamentary elections as not free and fair before the elections had yet been conducted.

Their reason for condemning the elections ahead of time was that the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act and the Public Order and Security Act made it impossible to conduct free and fair elections in Zimbabwe.

What made this pronouncement astounding was that the LSZ had accepted to be one of the observers of the elections and the impugned pieces of legislation had been challenged and upheld by the courts.

Since 1992, the LSZ has consistently encouraged and worked with external forces and organisations opposed to Zimbabwe’s African land reclamation movement.

One of these, the International Bar Association, sent British and North American lawyers to Zimbabwe who were hosted by leaders of the LSZ and who later engaged in orgies of vilification and demonisation against Zimbabwe and its African land reclamation all over the world.

Between 2005 and 2006 the LSZ went to the Constitutional Court to stop legislation which would have made it easier for the State to investigate, document and prosecute cases of economic sabotage, corruption and fraud.

The LSZ had a hard time demonstrating how it was in its interest to stop such a law and how such a law indeed prejudiced the society or any of its members, leaving some progressive nationalists to guess that maybe a law making it easier to curb economic crimes was seen by some of the ideologically inclined leaders of the LSZ as prejudicing chances of the foreign-sponsored regime change project ever succeeding. The Constitutional Court dismissed the application, saying the LSZ lacked a clear standing in terms of the Section 24 of the Constitution upon which it relied.

In other words, the LSZ failed to show why a law to improve the arrest, detention and prosecution of economic criminals would injure the society.

In all these examples, it can be demonstrated that the position taken by leaders of the LSZ did not, in fact, represent the wishes and interests of the majority of its members.

In the case of the premature condemnation of the 2005 parliamentary elections, several lawyers told The Sunday Mail that the leaders of the LSZ had not consulted members and that, if they had done so, the majority would not have agreed with them.

These facts raise a fundamental national question about Zimbabwe in the Third Chimurenga. The Law Society of Zimbabwe is, in fact, a Government institution set up and administered through the Legal Practitioners’ Act as a means to promote and insure justice in the development and administration of national laws. It also has responsibility to develop and direct legal education throughout the country.

Zimbabwe has experienced its breakthroughs in the form of the Second and Third Chimurenga. Is the LSZ part of this revolutionary movement or is it still a Rhodesian and Anglo-American instrument?

The breakthrough for the rise of China as an industrialising centre came with the Long March and the Chinese Revolution; the breakthrough for the United States as a superpower came with the American Revolution and the later Civil War which abolished the legal basis for chattel slavery; the rise of Britain as a world industrial power started with the English Revolution; just as the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution also made possible the emergence of France and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, respectively.

In every one of those societies men and women of law played their roles in transforming old legal systems, transforming legal education, to match the great transformations in society, culture and the economy.

As the authors of African Perspectives on Development point out in their very first chapter of the book, among the prerequisites for the development of a vibrant economy and society is the need to create new and revolutionary "transaction rules" responding to and consistent with the new order:

"The very process of development itself cannot take place without some kind of trusted agreement between the main categories of actors in society about how to transact business and other social relations . . . Struggle is usually necessary and unavoidable in attempts to rectify unfairness and injustice in the process of social change . . . the struggle for greater fairness and justice of transaction rules is one aspect of the development process itself, unless such rules and procedures can be agreed by consent."

This is where Zimbabweans since 1992 have been asking to which "society" the Law Society of Zimbabwe belongs, because the leadership of that association has consistently resisted the African revolution and attempted to devalue every gain, every asset, which the First and Second Chimurenga have reclaimed.

In fact, it can be shown that the leadership of the Law Society of Zimbabwe has not even grasped what the real problem was which the First and Second Chimurenga resolved.

A clear grasp and understanding of that problem would enable the leaders of the LSZ to lead the process of creating progressive laws instead of leading in demonising the revolution.

What Zimbabweans are not told today, which used to be common knowledge during the liberation struggle, is the central fact that in both South Africa and Rhodesia the most pivotal act in the crime of apartheid was the white land theft. This land theft was the foundation for most of the other forms of oppression, exploitation and discrimination throughout the region.

In 1978 economist Roger Riddell put the effects of this land theft precisely, saying:

"The total surface area of Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) covers 94,4 million acres. Under the Land Tenure Act (of 1969) 45 million acres have been set aside for Africans and Europeans respectively. At the end of 1976 there were . . . 680 000 African farmers . . . nearly three times the maximum number that can be safely carried . . . and 6 682 European farmers, so that on average every European had access to one hundred times as much land as every African . . . the European areas contain almost twice as much of the land most suited for crop production."

Moreover, of the best agricultural land under white settler control in 1976, more than three million acres were not being used at all.

They were being held as collateral for speculative purposes for the white settlers. As the number of white farmers fell from 6 682 to 4 000 in 1992, more and more prime agricultural land went unused or underutilised.

John Sprack in the International Defence and Aid Fund booklet Rhodesia: The Sixth Province of South Africa then demonstrated how the racist land tenures of South Africa and Rhodesia were central to the crime of apartheid:

"The foundation of white supremacy in both Rhodesia and South Africa lies in the area of land policy, and in the labour policy which complements this. The two are interrelated and their development has followed a similar pattern in both countries. South Africa’s experience, because it both pre-dated similar processes in Rhodesia and provided several variations of a native policy" . . . furnished the main guidelines in the shaping of Rhodesian policy on land and labour . . . In both countries the (racist) allocation of land served a dual exploitive purpose. The white settlers’ first requirement was land for cultivation (and mineral speculation), their second labour to enable them to do this . . . The white demand for both land and labour, was served by a policy of expropriation of land from the African peasantry."

The United Nations Human Rights Commission was supposed to compile lists of organisations, institutions and individuals to be prosecuted for the crime of apartheid.

As Professor Kader Asmal pointed out in his legal paper on Namibia in September 1984, the prosecutions were supposed to lead to judgments for reparations and other forms of compensation to be paid to victims of apartheid throughout Southern Africa.

Where member states of the UN or representatives of the victims could not agree on the reparations, the International Court of Justice was supposed to arbitrate.

The Law Society of Zimbabwe is pursuing a policy the opposite to what international law requires.What do these findings mean?

In order for Zimbabwean society to figure out what it wants Government to do with the LSZ, we must understand the full implications of the conduct of the leaders of the LSZ especially since 1992.

First, there is a strange logic in the rationalisations created by the leaders of the LSZ: that as lawyers they could not do much to change the legacy of UDI and apartheid as envisaged in the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid because that was a political task beyond the confines of the professional practice of law.

Even such participants in the crime of Apartheid as Professor R.H. Christie can still give keynote addresses to lawyers and students of law in Zimbabwe without raising questions about their enthusiastic participation in making Rhodesian laws and serving in the Rhodesian armed forces against the Second Chimurenga.

However, African lawyers who have actively participated in trying to reverse that Rhodesian legacy and to fulfil the ideals of the 1973 international convention are a different issue altogether, with Arnold Tsunga, the current secretary of the LSZ stating categorically that an African lawyer is accountable to the LSZ even if the act in question was "outside the course of his/her duties as long as one is a registered legal practitioner".

Third, this ideologically fanatic position is characteristic of sponsored politics in Zimbabwe: the majority of the people vote overwhelmingly to re-elect President Mugabe and Zanu-PF for 26 years; the election observer teams from AU, the ACP, NAM, Sadc and other parts of the world have consistently declared these elections to be free and fair; and opposition parties have participated and accepted results in those constituencies where they won.

Yet despite all this, the President is denounced throughout the West as an "unelected despot" and Zimbabwe vilified as a totalitarian dictatorship.

The same politics has entered the Law Society of Zimbabwe. As one of the targeted and hounded lawyers wrote to Arnold Tsunga:

"In my response to you dated 16 December 2004 I referred you to two Chinhoyi Magistrates’ Court and High Court Harare cases both on the same matter and both of which I was involved in and won against the complainant. In other words . . . other competent judicial institutions had dealt with and disposed of the matter. You cannot therefore continue to put me to the same jeopardy in respect of which I have already been subjected lawfully."

To show that we are not involved in matters of law but in regime change ideology and politics embedded in the leadership of the LSZ, it is perhaps helpful to quote the white man who lost in court and yet still pursues the matter through the LSZ. He refers to lawyers benefiting from the Third Chimurenga as "rotten eggs".

"The above mentioned people are unfortunately examples of rotten eggs in our society . . . Honourable professionals of our society (meaning the leaders of the LSZ), I implore you to investigate the above allegations and hope that you weed out the rotten eggs in your midst. It would be a great day in Zimbabwe when lawyers can be seen as upholders of the law and champions of Human rights."

Therefore trying to reverse the legacies of UDI and apartheid cannot be honourable or consistent with the rule of white law.

Nathaniel Manheru .  A Lawless Society  The Herald 12 August 2006

The Law Society, we are told, is building human rights cases against the ongoing crackdown on money launderers. Again, the "dictatorial Mugabe government" is trampling upon the sacred rights of Zimbabweans, Arnold Tsunga’s Law Society opines. Really?

Which takes you to the heart of the matter. Remember, we are dealing with sponsored destabilisation of the economy, and one inspired by politics of regime change which Dell now seeks to renounce. And, of course, the Law Society — not necessarily those in whose name it speaks — is at the centre of this whole strategy.

Without sensing the irony of its name or extended role, the Society would rather defend the dubious rights of money launderers than take the righteous side of rule of law! What rank hypocrisy! One hopes by the time it is ready with its well-funded dossier, the operation is not just over, but replaced by its equally concussing sequel meant to make foreign opposition funding forbiddingly expensive.

We seem in for exciting times which will yield new mores in national politics. And the Law Society as presently constituted will be part of the smouldering debris. Icho.

Law society mired in propaganda against Zim Sunday Mail 13 August 2006

AFRICAN FOCUS By Tafataona P. Mahoso

WHILE it seems clear that the majority of the members of the Law Society of Zimbabwe have not mandated LSZ leaders to engage in regime change and propaganda activities against their own country, the evidence that these leaders have played that exact role in the last 15 years is substantial.

Just this week, The Financial Gazette (August 10 2006) carried the front page story: "Court challenge for cash crackdown", in which it was reported: "As the Law Society of Zimbabwe (LSZ) declared that the seizure of cash was illegal and condemned the direct exercise of executive (Presidential) powers, the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) cobbled up a legal challenge to the crackdown."

What the LSZ leaders have declared illegal ahead of any court hearing is Statutory Instrument 199 of 2006, Presidential Powers (Temporary Measures) (Currency Revaluation) Regulations.

The story revealed that leaders of the LSZ, the ZLHR and Crisis Zimbabwe Coalition were opposed both to the laws which Government and the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe are using in handling the economic emergency and to the means through which the laws are being implemented.

Section 5 (6) seeks to provide State agencies certain immunities against prosecution for minor accounting discrepancies which result directly from the public necessity to change from the old to the new currency.

"No suit, prosecution or other legal proceedings shall lie against the Government, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe or any financial institution in respect of any losses resulting from rounding-off in accordance with this section."

Likewise Section 12 provides immunity in all cases where official powers and functions are exercised in good faith.

"No suit, prosecution or other legal proceedings shall lie against the Government, the Reserve Bank, a financial institution or any employee of the State, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe or a financial institution in respect of anything done by or on behalf of the Government, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe or a financial institution, with due diligence and in good faith, in the exercise of any power or other performance of any function under these regulations or directions made thereunder."

The main argument is that Statutory Instrument 199 of 2006 and especially Sections 5 (6) and 12 should not be allowed in a democratic society and that these sections in particular violate human rights.

Not surprisingly, one of the principal patrons and sponsors of the oppositional and regime change agenda in Zimbabwe, the United States of America, also voiced its opposition to the economic policies of the Government of Zimbabwe the very next day.

In the Zimbabwe Independent (August 11 2006), US Ambassador to Zimbabwe Christopher Dell elaborated and rationalised attacks he had already made at Africa University and at the National University of Science and Technology.

Noticing that the majority of the people of Zimbabwe now understood the regime change agenda to be a coded term for an illegal and externally-sponsored overthrow of the elected Government, Ambassador Dell sought to redefine the mission of his government as seeking "regime restoration" and not regime change. Nevertheless, he continued to attack Zimbabwe’s economic policies.

Given the fact that the regime change forces in Zimbabwe have routinely held up the example of the US as "a democratic society," the US Ambassador would have assisted these forces, including leaders of the LSZ, if he had told Zimbabweans that Zimbabwe’s economic emergency laws and regulations are not tight or draconian enough when compared with those of his own country, the US.

The US has several (not just one) pieces of legislation empowering the President to employ economic emergency powers on a national as well as on an international scale. These include (among others) the Patriot Act, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the Trading with the Enemy Act and (specifically targeting Zimbabwe) the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act. Aspects of the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act also deal with economic issues and emergencies.

The US Ambassador could have also told Zimbabweans and the LSZ that his country provides immunities to its agents and to those obeying instructions of its agents, not only within the territory of the US, but far beyond the borders of this country.

Under the US Patriot Act, companies are immune from prosecution if they "provide law enforcement officials with customer identifying information without notifying their customers" as was required in the past.

Under the US Patriot Act, search warrants and "sneak and peek" warrants provided by the courts may remain unavailable and unannounced to those being searched or investigated "until weeks thereafter".

"An issuing court may order the notice delayed for a reasonable period of time and, with good cause, extensions, if it finds reasonable cause to believe that the contemporaneous notification may have any of the adverse consequences described in Section 2705."

Some of the consequences being avoided include endangering life; escape of the suspect under investigation; tampering with evidence; intimidation of witnesses or informers and others.

Another exemption granted to law enforcement authorities in the US is freedom from jurisdictional restrictions and requirements. If applied to Zimbabwe, this would mean an order issued by a Magistrate’s Court in Mutare can also be used in Chirundu or Beitbridge as long as the same crime causing the emergency is involved.

This leads to another exemption or immunity. In the past, an order made in terms of Barclays Bank could not be used on Standard Chartered Bank. Under US emergency legislation, there is no longer a need for multiple orders specifying every provider or institution affected. Generic orders are used to make the state more efficient and effective against criminals and saboteurs. An order against Barclays in Mutare could be used to order Metropolitan Bank in Bulawayo, without having to go to another court there, and without naming these targets specifically.

Another drastic change in US law to cope with global economic crimes and money laundering has been the creation of "catch-all" definitions. For example, "a licensed sender of money" means a "licensed sender of money or any other person who engages as a business in an informal money transfer or any network of people who engage as a business in facilitating the transfer of money domestically or internationally outside of the conventional financial institutions system".

In the current crackdown in which the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe is engaged, this broad definition is emerging, with the recognition at one time that only 15 percent of cash remained in the formal conventional system while 85 percent was outside that system. That is an extreme emergency. The drastic US laws are meant to deal with a much less severe situation than we find here.

Under the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCen), all movements of funds and financial instruments must be strictly and meticulously monitored and the director of FinCen is required to "assist Federal, State, local and foreign law enforcement and regulatory authorities in combating the use of informal, non-bank networks and payments and barter system mechanisms that permit the transfer of funds or the equivalent of funds without records and without compliance with criminal and tax laws".

The Ambassador of the US and those holding up the US as a paragon of democracy and the rule of law should have also told Zimbabweans that in terms of US law at present, money laundering is treated not only as a form of economic sabotage, but also as a form of terrorism.

For this reason, the penalties for money laundering and currency smuggling are very harsh. Apart from a minimum of five years imprisonment, most of the law also provides for a fine which is twice the value of the illegal transaction. Section 371 of the Patriot Act provides for a maximum of US$10 000 which can be moved through non-bank channels without having to be reported. All amounts above US$10 000 must be reported. It provides for a prison term of not less than five years for failure to comply with the law. It provides also for forfeiture of all the smuggled money as well as seizure and forfeiture of the equipment used to transfer or conceal the money and any property which is traceable to the funds and to the means used to smuggle the funds.

Leaders of the LSZ are misleading both their members and the public about the meaning and context of Statutory Instrument 199 of 2006. They are misleading the nation about the uses of executive powers all over the world compared with Zimbabwe. The US economic emergency laws we have listed here are all controlled by the US President. But in attacking Zimbabwe using Statutory Instrument 199 as a reason, the LSZ is merely doing what it has been doing in the last 15 years or so.

We cite here a few past examples, just to indicate this pattern. More detailed analyses of the cited incidents will be done later.

One way of showing the pattern is to use Press statements and stories, especially those appearing in The Daily News, which was the most favoured outlet for the leaders of the LSZ at the height of the regime change agitation in this country.

As we started to show last week, at the heart to the agitation and its foreign sponsorship were two interlinked key issues: judicial reform to reflect the new Zimbabwe at the expiry of the Lancaster House restrictions; and African land reclamation and redistribution for the same reasons as judicial reform.

On 14 August 2000 two stories in The Daily News demonstrated the thrust and strategy favoured by the leaders of the LSZ. On page 3 was the story announcing that the "Law Society wants Mugabe to urgently restore rule of law".

Leaders of the LSZ the next day presented a petition to President Mugabe attacking and denouncing the African land reclamation movement. In the same issue of the paper, on the front cover, another story again demonstrated what the LSZ leadership wanted to be a trend for the future: "Farm invasions declared illegal", based on a High Court judgement by Justice Moses Chinhengo.

The African land reclamation movement was condemned by LSZ leaders as criminal land invasions and the President was petitioned to stop the movement by force.

Next, on November 7 2000, one of the main sponsors of the regime change agenda in Zimbabwe spoke out in support of the LSZ leaders’ standpoint.

The visiting Danish Minister for Development Co-operation told The Daily News that European Union and Danish "aid" already cut off would be restored only if Zimbabwe restored the rule of law on the farms, which meant stopping the African movement and entrenching the white settler farmers.

On 9 November 2000 the editor of The Daily News wrote an editorial: "Denmark’s gesture is our last chance". This affirmed both what Denmark had said and what LSZ leaders were saying and doing against the Third Chimurenga.


Then on 20 November 2000, the same paper reported: "Law Society warns on harassment of judges." What was condemned as harassment was the fact that the liberation War Veterans Association had objected to Chief Justice Gubbay’s chairing court proceedings on the land issue after he had already voiced a hostile ideological position against the African land reclamation movement itself.

Then on 14 December 2000 The Daily News reported that President Robert Mugabe had pointed out that the courts would not be able to resolve the land issue. This was generous and wise advice which the white settler farmers and their LSZ supporters ignored to the detriment of the former.

By January 10, 2001 the wisdom of President Mugabe’s generous advice was already evident. The Daily News reported: "[Chief Justice] Gubbay condemns onslaught on Judiciary,"

The white Chief Justice and the LSZ leaders took the failure of the courts to resolve the land issue to mean that the sate was now attacking the entire judiciary.

By 13 January 2001 the LSZ leaders had transformed their opposition to land reform into a war on the country and the economy. The Daily News announced proudly: "4 000 lawyers snub Harare." The leaders of the LSZ persuaded the Commonwealth Lawyers Association not to hold its 13th conference in Zimbabwe because there was no rule of law.

By 9 February 2001 the Daily News reported that Chief Justice Gubbay had resigned and lawyers were calling his resignation an unlawful dismissal.

By 10 March 2001, the same paper was reporting that lawyers denounced the replacement of former Chief Justice Gubbay (a white man) by Acting Chief Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku (an African man).

On 13 March 2001, The Daily News reported: Lawyers reject [ruling] ZANU-PF [party’s] patronage."

This was not exactly true. What happened was that leaders of the LSZ were so convinced that there would be a change of ruling parties soon that they wanted the majority of lawyers to boycott Government departments and ruling party politicians, anticipating that business from that quarter would diminish anyway and a new party in Government, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, would bring more business. Most African lawyers in fact saw this as foolish overzealousness which assessment turned out to be true.

On 17 April 2002 the Daily News reported that LSZ leaders now wanted to change the constitution of Zimbabwe because it was so open and flexible that it might allow Government to pack the entire judiciary with only those judges sympathetic to its policies! This was an attack on the new African Chief Justice, since as long as the Chief Justice was white and many judges also white, the LSZ’s leaders did not view the constitution as allowing the "stuffing" of the judiciary with cronies of the ruling party.

The indigenisation of the judiciary was feared by white farmers, by white foreign powers (such as the US and UK) and by leaders of the LSZ because it might bring about the development of new laws to resolve the legacies of UDI and apartheid which were centred on the colonial theft of African land by white settlers. The current panic against Statutory Instrument 199 of 2006 is also based on the fear that the current crackdown on money launderers might also destroy the legacies of UDI and apartheid in the urban economy which is still not Zimbabwean in spite of its many African masks. Leaders of the Law Society of Zimbabwe represent one of the African masks of the foreign urban economy.

Mahoso this week

Strategic implications of current warfare

AFRICAN FOCUS By Tafataona P. Mahoso

On Sunday June 6 1999 my African Focus instalment in The Sunday Mail was entitled "Government should declare a national economic emergency".




Among the specific possible programmes included in that instalment were the following:

l "A national campaign to explain the current economic crisis to the people, making sure internal and global dimensions are understood (in terms of the everyday language and experience of the people)."

l "A ruthless campaign to stamp out corruption in all sectors."

l "Making sure that land reform, land redistribution, agrarian innovation and production are included in the intervention programme."

l "Redirecting the Ministry of Finance and the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe away from just budget cutting, budget balancing, tinkering with interest rates, or from just devaluing the currency . . . The focus should be on reviving internal and regional production, creating jobs and curbing speculative capital by controlling capital and financial flows in and out of the country."

Government did not declare a national economic emergency in 1999; and the reasons for its hesitation are quite easy to specify and to understand, even though one may not accept them.

The Law Society of Zimbabwe and other forces representing remnants of Rhodesian and foreign political and economic interests have just voiced their strong opposition to the current instrument which Government is using to fight speculation, money laundering and corruption, that is Statutory Instrument 199 of 2006, otherwise known as Presidential Powers (Temporary Measures) (Currency Revaluation) Regulations, 2006. This opposition has been going on since the beginning of 2004 and, on July 11 2006, the Supreme Court of Zimbabwe threw out one of the Law Society’s numerous constitutional challenges to anti-corruption and anti-money laundering aspects of the Criminal Procedure and Evidence Act.

It was significant that the Supreme Court ruled that the Law Society failed to demonstrate how its human rights or its members’ human rights would be violated through the application of this law. In other words, the Constitutional Court could not understand who exactly the Law Society was representing in that appeal in terms of Section 24 of the Constitution. Law Society of Zimbabwe leaders were representing "regime change" forces whose key areas of attack on Zimbabwe have been the following:

l The law, especially the Constitution, because it may provide the instruments for sovereign and autonomous action on behalf of the people or it may be used to criminalise and demonise the same sovereign and autonomous actions as manifestations of lawlessness, "ethnic cleansing," terrorism, repression, authoritarianism and despotic rule.

l The financial sector, because under neo-liberalism, finance is the key fuel for the speculative economy which imperialism has made superior to the productive economy and which has become the key weapon for waging financial warfare on entire nations and entire regions. In the case of Zimbabwe, one strategy of the financial warfare has been the massive internal devaluation of the Zimbabwe dollar accompanied by its de-facto revaluation outside Zimbabwe, that is, in Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Botswana and South Africa, where the Zimbabwe dollar became the key instrument for looting Zimbabwe of its gold, its sugar, its grains and fruits and vegetables. The more Zimbabweans were told that their currency was a worthless "Zim kwacha" the more of the same currency was being smuggled to neighbouring countries and used to take out billions of dollars worth of priceless assets.

Fuel, because it is already scarce globally and because it is 100 percent imported and therefore extremely responsive to external factors and external manipulation. At the same time the impact of fuel shortages and fuel manipulations on the entire populations is immediate and dramatic.

Food, food production and distribution again, because what fuel is for the economic infrastructure, food is for the survival and functioning of the human person. Food security is ideal as a target for destabilising forces because it can be compromised through many avenues; withdrawal of chemicals and fertilisers, hiking of prices for implements and machinery, disruption of transport and general inflation.

In this context, what strategic observations can we make therefore about events since the declaration of Operation Zuva Rabuda?

The first observation we make is that the same forces who seem defeated by Operation Zuva Rabuda and Statutory Instrument 199 of 2006 are fighting back through the fuel sector. This is partly because much of the cash which had left the formal banking sector was used to finance a fuel parallel market in addition to buying and selling foreign currency or buying and selling gold.

The second observation is that in order for Operation Zuva Rabuda to succeed, it must be accompanied by and synchronised with other operations, especially in fuel, energy, transport and commerce. The rampant corruption which was so obvious in the area of finance and cash movements is now exhibiting itself through the rampant hiking of prices in general and through the efforts to devalue the Zimbabwe dollar further using a fuel parallel market. This is understandable because the removal of cash from the formal system and into neighbouring countries was not being done for its own sake. It was meant to remove assets of real value from Zimbabwe while condemning the Zimbabwe dollar to endless devaluations. It was also meant to deny Zimbabwe the foreign currency it is entitled to when its goods and assets are bought outside. The externalised Zimbabwe dollar has become a de-facto hard currency for those looting this country from neighbouring states. But it has never been given that recognition by our economists and our journalists.

The third observation is that Zimbabwe ’s experience since 1987 confirms the view of many radical scholars who say that neo-liberal economics is not a science but an ideology.

The fourth observation we care to make is that the bankruptcy of our "economists" directly feeds the bankruptcy of our "economic reporters" in the media. Both are notorious for their narcissistic approach to the world. When economists speak of the economy of Zimbabwe they assume that it is identical with or synonymous with what they know, what they study, what they think, as economists. When journalists report or "tell it like it is," they also assume that the totality of news and information is what journalists and their editors gather, report and publish as news and information. So, it is easy for journalists to limit their study and reporting of the Zimbabwe economy to what people calling themselves "economists" have said the economy is or the economy is doing.

If the "economists" say the Zimbabwe dollar is overvalued and is actually worthless, the journalists also report and reproduce the same. For this reason, the most startling revelation from Operation Zuva Rabuda has not been reported: that the Zimbabwe dollar is so powerful, so valuable and so attractive that the whole region cried when we decided to switch its identity on them without a prolonged warning. This is the truth which a reading of the actual "economy" of Zimbabwe gives us but which the neo-liberal textbook economics of our economists cannot see. The narcissism of neo-liberal "economic science" can be exposed by asking a simple question: What is the daily experienced and observed reality in Zimbabwean society for which economics is the science? How can such a science, if it is a real science, fail to highlight the yawning gap between the claim that the Zimbabwe dollar is worthless and should be devalued further, on one hand, and the real world revelation that, on the other hand, that very same dollar has been so useful, so valuable to certain people that 85 percent of it was outside the formal system at the time of Operation Zuva Rabuda? How can any real science fail to recognise such a contradiction especially when the people crying for much of the 85 percent of the externalised currency are in neighbouring countries from which the propaganda against the same Zimbabwe dollar has been mounted for the last 15 years?

Arnold Tsunga: The bellwether of imperialism: Nathaniel Manheru



I have just been reading the South African Citizen, itself a direct propaganda handover from South Africa’s apartheid days. Its views on Zimbabwe, especially when it comes to matters relating to white interests, remain as trenchantly hostile as during the apartheid era.


This makes it clear that a mere handover of an organ is not in itself transformative, which is why institutions have to have their founding mores and entrenched values trounced and replaced by new positive ones, if ever they are to serve the majority.

We experienced it here, well after the death of Rhodesian settlerism, when a good number of key institutions designed to defend and propagate white settlerism, remained defiantly untransformed, pushing for a neo-colonial model state.

One of this was the Law Society of Zimbabwe, which remained trenchantly white, albeit decorated by black surfaces at the helm.

Of course there were a few well meaning black lawyers who sought to validate transformative leadership, and Arnold Tsunga, its present president sounds like not one of them. I will come to that a little later. For now, a few larger points on how imperialism henpecks transformative urge in African revolutions.

Ducking the national question

Quite a few things remain untransformed in that land to the south of us, much the same way many things remained Rhodesian, long after the Union Jack had long come tumbling.

But frankly speaking, what matters is not how far transformation has gone or not gone in the few years South Africa has lived after freeing itself from apartheid.

What matters is how well preserved, nurtured and defended the will to transform remains within the body-politic.

Which is why South Africa should be quite wary; should resist unhelpful detractions. Such as the recently concluded Zuma trial which in real political terms suggested the foremost national question confronting South Africa today is high sex — literally.

Well, it is not and any suggestions to the contrary are meant to derail the South African revolution. South Africa did not have to split itself so profoundly over such an inane question meaning nothing to the chauvinistic Zulu, Xhosa or some such African culture where raging libido claims fame and prize.

I know our women folk do not like what I have just said, but I pit it so crudely to drive the point home. In a situation of entrenched structural apartheid, unmolested womanhood or unappeased libido, count for little as long as both circumvent the primary inequities. Sexuality amidst social inequities is a luxury for opulent liberals.

Not deprived African men and women who should know that the battle of sexes gets settled in the broader battle against imperialism. And South Africa allowed liberals to crowd its template; allowed itself to address a question which did not arise on the national front.

Similar past: the Tekere trial

Do not forget that we had a bit of that too in the early morning of our Independence. I am referring to the rather sonorous trial of Edgar Tekere, the then firebrand Secretary General of the victorious Zanu, following the gunning down of a bad white man by the Secretary General’s boys.

The sensationally covered trial suggested the chief challenge and burden for the new Zanu Government was providing security to Rhodesia’s haughty left-overs, security to the same men who bore arms only yesterday, and used them against our hapless people. Not the challenge of protecting and bringing justice to the black underdog: long exposed, long denied, long underprovided.

Not the land question. It was a red herring, given credence by the brand new policy of national reconciliation, which actualised as an unconditional embrace of a remorseless white Rhodesian. But the will to transform society towards racial empowerment and parity remained strong, ready to reassert itself as a radical land agenda, once the conditions were favourable.

That they became in 2000, which is why the Third Chimurenga exploded, right in the face of an unsuspecting empire. It is the will for transformative change which matters at the end of the day, and which South Africa should seek to nurture and defend.

Erring on the side of wrong

What caught my attention in that residually rabid publication was a piece on the so-called Law Society of Zimbabwe, announcing alleged new threats to it, predictably from "the Government of Zimbabwe". And "the Government of Zimbabwe" was a reference to a short paragraph I, Nathaniel, son of Manheru, wrote last week as an afterthought.

It was a real thought sod, one pointing out in so few and measured words the glaring anomaly of a so-called Law Society, pronouncing itself against financial propriety as wished by the monetary authorities. This meant a Law Society defending money laundering by seeking to invoke the human rights shibboleth on the side of the not-so righteous.

I wondered, as I am sure most people did, why those who purport to speak for lawyers of this country, on this one sought to associate the profession with the rights of iniquity, indeed sought to stymie and even defeat the Godly war RBZ had declared on organised money launderers, most of them carefully deployed to frustrate policy and destabilise society. Could this suggest and betray the politics of the Society? Or the Council that minds its affairs? Or both?

Dragging in baggage

In the Citizen, as in the local media, the face of the Society was one Arnold Tsunga, known less for his newly found association with the Law Society of Zimbabwe (LSZ) and more for his intemperate role in a donor-driven association of governance NGOs, including the so-called Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights.

More than a lawyer, he is a Western donors’ man, one whose stature the same donors have elevated to dizzy levels of his league, passing for imperialism’s bellwether. Looked at in terms of local politics, he is the NGO face of the MDC, which means the black surface that paints a miscellany of forces behind the MDC, most of them foreign and western. It is baffling that he ever became the Society’s leader. Surely the Society is aware of the baggage he drags in, and the overly political reading which inevitably comes from all this and him. He is a politically partisan character who ill affords the decency of neutral representation. It is all clear in the pronouncements attributed to him, and which he had not challenged at the time of this article.

Titan or a whining piglet?

And he uses both the Law Society and the Citizen to grandstand politically. He claims that the LSZ has been standing between the "unbridled power of the state" and "the citizen", the former referring to the Zimbabwe Government, the latter most probably to himself and those of his ilk. Law Society President?

Those familiar with the instrument that founds the LSZ will be struck immediately by the incongruity of the claim. The Law Society is founded on the vision of ensuring and enforcing compliance and probity in the legal fraternity.

It is a role and function that inflexibly predisposes it towards cultivating lawful conduct and existence not only within its membership, but also within the citizenry. This is an outlook quite at odds with the position which Tsunga, purporting to speak for the Law Society, has adopted in respect of the ongoing crackdown on the arcane world of money launderers. It is, quite clearly, a role much smaller and confined than the grandiose one he claims for it.

What would be "unbridled" about a Government calling the citizenry to clean and lawful conduct on money matters? In effect, Tsunga makes the Law Society read like the Constitution of Zimbabwe, itself the only lawful stricture we know to trammel or sanction the trammeling of State power. As he whines - frightened piglet style - he regurgitates the meaningless verbiage of his NGO background: "… the state is now angling itself for an attack on the independence and the self-regulation of the legal profession".

Quite amusing! Independent from what? Which state? The Nathaniel Manheru state? It is a craving for a head-on clash with the Government of Zimbabwe we know to be the wish of the curious breed brewed by the British and their allies, who inhabit the governance NGO world. Such conflict confers higher standing on the one provoking it. It means many things, including many monetised foreign human rights awards. And how does a self-proclaimed titanic institution standing between "unbridled power of the state" and the citizenry dwindle in one sentence to a puny and cowardly self-regulator of a profession?

What has become of the tremendous powers that range it as a counterpoise to vast powers of the State? And his worry of the return of the NGO bill when its clear the Law Society is not an NGO? Which hat is he wearing? As if to validate this vulnerable puniness, Tsunga scurries for refuge in some white-led, white-controlled and donor funded NGO called Southern Africa Litigation Centre whose face is one Nicole Fritz whose totem remains undisclosed. Occasional outward flights are the hallmark of MDC politics, are they not?

May the real Society please stand up!

Just who is the Law Society of Zimbabwe? Is it its white-ran leadership, or the many African lawyers in whose name it claims those fabulous powers it suggests make it an equal opposite to the State? How many within the legal profession endorsed Tsunga’s pronouncements which appeared calculated for use by his human rights lobby?

Was the statement on the ongoing campaign of the RBZ discussed and adopted by the legal fraternity? Could Tsunga please publish minutes of that meeting? And his antics of mutating into the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights in order to verbally abuse Dr. Mahoso? Who heads that body? Why does a considered position of the legal fraternity, if one it was, turn to a patently partisan and exclusionary political platform for defence?

Is it being suggested other members of the Law Society are neither Zimbabwean nor for Human Rights? What is the imputation here? Is the Law Society an opposition?

And lawyers who represent the RBZ in this and other matters, what becomes of them in the eyes of the Society? Candidates for enquiries? Is it true that lawyers who have represented the ruling party and Government are being targeted and harassed? Is it true that there are moves to re-register Lovemore Madhuku?

What is the view of the Law Society to the fact of interlocking leadership in bodies whose functions are at cross purposes? So many questions which are being raised soto voce by the same lawyers Tsunga pretends to speak for.

Another MDC faction.

Did anyone read the story from Mutare on the violent encounter between operatives of Morgan Tsvangirai faction of the MDC? You have read nothing yet, as more is coming. There is a deep, very deep rift within Tsvangirai’s camp. It is a fact.

The villager has simply moved to gain stifling control of everything: from purse to policy; from persons to political practice. And the likes of Biti resent it. I mean they resent having to catch a coin when it gets occasionally tossed by their parsimonious leader, himself now an out and out control freak.

It’s intolerable, which is why there is total disagreement on candidates for all pending by-elections and mayoral elections. Tsvangirai’s faction is seething with division and mounting frustration, both often vented horizontally within ranks. It is peeling, which is why it is quite naïve for Mutambara to seek any kind of rapproachment with Tsvangirai at this point in time.

Until of course one factors in the simmering tensions and by-now-hard-to-disguise rift between Mutambara himself and Welshman, a rift with increasingly strident tribal undertones. Watch out on that front too.

Icho!

Law Society leaders’ veil of deniability

AFRICAN FOCUS By Tafataona P. Mahoso Sunday Mail 8-10-06

As professionals, and when it is in their interest, lawyers are very particular about who is empowered to speak for whom, where, how and why. In being so particular they promote accountability, transparency and clarity.


This is the reason why in this column we have raised questions about the extent to which the general membership of the Law Society of Zimbabwe has authorised or not authorised leaders of that society to engage in partisan and sectarian "civic activities" in the name of the society. These same leaders disappear behind a veil of deniability when challenged to show that their sectarian views, indeed, represent the LSZ.

In August 2006, we set out to ventilate this very puzzle through three instalments:

l "Lawyers’ body fights for return of Rhodesia: LSZ seeks regime change to reverse gains of Chimurenga", The Sunday Mail, August 6.

l "Law Society mired in propaganda against Zim", The Sunday Mail, August 13.

l "LSZ leadership supports, mimics Western sponsors", The Sunday Mail, August 20.

As if to furnish impeccable evidence that we were, in fact, correct in our view of the LSZ leaders’ abuse of the Law Society and the Legal Practitioners Act, at least five responses were issued through more than a dozen outlets.

None of the responses came from official organs of the LSZ or from officers of the society in their official capacity. At least three responses published in newspapers and on the Internet were anonymous. Others were owned by faceless NGOs.

The outlets used included the British-sponsored propaganda sheet The Zimbabwean on August 3 2006; The Sunday Standard on August 27 2006; and The Zimbabwe Independent on August 18 2006.

Those who claimed responsibility for their reactions on behalf of the LSZ included the International Bar Association (IBA); Justice Richard Goldstone of South Africa; the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute; Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights; Mr Mark Ellis of the IBA; and Mr Arnold Tsunga, speaking as "an award-winning human rights lawyer" but not on behalf of the LSZ.

What these dislocated responses revealed was exactly what the three African Focus articles had alleged — that the LSZ, a statutory body, was being abused by its current leaders to provide a veil of deniability for groups, individuals and agendas which were not sanctioned by the majority of the members of the society. This was not an original idea of the author or The Sunday Mail. It was a complaint from the members of the LSZ.

As The Herald of September 29 2006 was also to confirm, there were similar complaints from LSZ members against the partisan and biased manner in which the application by NCA chairman Dr Lovemore Madhuku had been fast-tracked ahead of others.

The Herald story was called "Law Society split".

"Sources who attended the meeting said the LSZ was divided on whether to re-admit Dr Madhuku as some felt that his case had received ‘special treatment’ ahead of other pending cases. They questioned the prudence of trying to ‘fast track’ the re-admission of Dr Madhuku."

This fast tracking was done again to promote a political agenda which is not representative of the membership of the society. The implication was that Dr Madhuku had political backers within the secretariat and the leadership of the LSZ, who were bending rules to favour the individual applicant.

In terms of strategy, the individual and NGO reactions to criticism of the LSZ revealed some of the unethical strategies which non-partisan communicators are usually warned to avoid, unless they want their audiences to view them as propagandists.

The first and most consistent strategy among them was what is called "attacking the source" in order to avoid the argument. None of the reactions actually attempted to dispute the evidence cited in the articles. All the reactions focused on attacking the author.

The second strategy was anonymity, where the authors defending the LSZ were not named at all or they hid behind the name of an NGO whose authority to speak on behalf of a statutory body could not be established.

The third strategy was to use deniability as transparency, as innocence and as accountability. Deniability among Zimbabwe’s "regime change" forces is achieved through a web of what Trudy Stevenson called "political incest" within the NGO-opposition camp.

In her Zimbabwe Independent article called "Civil society threatened by political incest", the MP alleged that a dwindling number of non-governmental individual leaders (NGOILs) has imposed its leadership on an increasing number of supposed civil society bodies which are no more than acronyms in project proposals.

"The politicisation of civil society does not go unnoticed, nor is it likely to strengthen civil society. Indeed, it is already causing disaffection.

"More seriously, it has become such a widespread incestuous relationship that instead of civil society organising itself more widely, its organised members are actually dwindling, since the same person holds positions in several organisations at the same time!"

And for a long time, it did not seem to matter whether Arnold Tsunga or Wilbert Mapombere or Brian Kagoro or David Chimhini was speaking for the MDC, Zimrights, NCA, Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights or the Law Society of Zimbabwe. The incestuous web was what mattered.

A long time ago, some enterprising guy in the US had the idea that a mediocre brand of soup would become very popular if its solid ingredients were made of letters of the alphabet. He invented the alphabet soup. Today the so-called civil society is an alphabet soup stirred constantly by donors and sponsors. The result in Zimbabwe is the absurdity which MP Stevenson deplored in her article.

The endless acronyms in the alphabet soup of "civil society" now outnumber the active members. Some of the leaders are leading half a dozen or more acronyms which they call civil society: The Christian Alliance (CA); Crisis Coalition Zimbabwe (CCZ); Doctors for Human Rights (DHR); Independent Journalists of Zimbabwe (IJAZ); Journalists for Human Rights (JHR); Legal Resources Foundation (LRF); MDC-Mutambara; MDC-Tsvangirai; Media Alliance of Zimbabwe (MAZ); Media Institute of Southern Africa (Misa); National Constitutional Assembly (NCA); Save Zimbabwe Convention (SZC); The Women’s Coalition; Women of Zimbabwe Arise (Woza); Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU); Zimrights; Zimbabwe Civic Education Trust (Zimcet); Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR); and Zimbabwe National Students Union (Zinasu). But society is not made of acronyms.

Nor do the acronyms represent social transformation, as we are told. The acronyms represent enhanced catchment areas from which to apply for and capture sponsorship money from stupid donors.

But the acronyms also provide the web of deniability whose strands can be cut off quickly or reconnected instantly, depending on the needs of the moment.

Stevenson’s account is worth reading in parts: "The Save Zimbabwe Convention hosted recently by the Christian Alliance highlighted the problem of partisanship.

"On the programme to make presentations were the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), the Zimbabwe National Students Union, the NCA, Crisis Zimbabwe Coalition, and the Women’s Coalition."

"The ZACTU presentation began with Lucia Matibenga, vice-president of the labour movement but also national chairperson of the MDC-Tsvangirai, Women’s Assembly.

"Elizabeth Marunda, formerly spokesperson for Crisis and also a member of the MDC-Tsvangirai, made the Women’s Coalition presentation.

"Lovemore Madhuku of the NCA conducted elections at the MDC-Tsvangirai congress earlier this year, and many NCA structures are in many wards led by MDC-Tsvangirai office bearers. Its national representative in the Zimbabwe United Residents Association is the MDC-Tsvangirai secretary for Harare North, while its representative in the NCA is or certainly was until recently MDC-Tsvangirai secretary for Harare Province."

"This politicisation of civil society does not go unnoticed, nor is it likely to strengthen civil society."

This confusion about who is representing or speaking for whom, when, where and how has also affected the LSZ. We concluded this because NGOs and NGOILs reacted instead of the statutory LSZ itself to this column’s criticisms of it.

Those who wrote and spoke in reaction were taking for granted the habits and culture of incestuous politics which Stevenson described. In doing so, they unintentionally demonstrated the validity of the criticism. When, how and why did the Law Society of Zimbabwe authorise partisan political NGOs to speak on its behalf, it being a statutory body?

When did LSZ members approve of such representation?

The attempt to break up into sectarian splinters a society recently liberated through a united movement is not a light matter. The massive sponsorship of such a project is part of a concerted Northern neoliberal strategy.

Alvin Toffler, in his book The Third Wave, describes the factionalisation of society in the North which is being funded here in Zimbabwe. It is good for creating niche or splinter markets but it does not lead to liberation.

According to Toffler: "The splinter groups themselves are increasingly transitory, springing up, dying out, turning over more and more rapidly, and forming a yeasty, hard-to-analyse flux . . . These same developments sweep into oblivion our notions about political coalitions, alliances, or united fronts."

That is why most of the sponsored groups are hostile to the African liberation movement, to the war veterans and to the united Zanu-PF.

The LSZ itself has not been spared by this foreign-sponsored splinter industry.

Demystifying LSZ’s alien script Sunday Mail 31^st December 06

AFRICAN FOCUS By Dr Tafataona P. Mahoso

ACCORDING to a recent conversation with former Law Society of Zimbabwe (LSZ) president Mr Sternford Moyo, it is not true, as we have alleged in this column, that leaders of the LSZ have become brazenly partisan in their administration of LSZ affairs and that in so doing they have alienated many of their own members.



Mr Moyo’s view is that, contrary to what we have alleged through this column, it is the leaders of the LSZ who have restrained the majority of the LSZ members from taking even more partisan and more radical positions which tend to be seen as anti-Zimbabwe. In other words, leaders of the LSZ have maintained for the society an "impartial" and "independent" position consistent with the requirements of the Legal Practitioners’ Act and the by-laws of the society.

Unless Mr Moyo convinces us to the contrary, we intend soon to show that his own annual report for 2003 and Mr Joseph James’ annual report for 2006 demonstrate unequivocally that leaders of the LSZ have attempted to turn the society into an adjunct of the political opposition and the foreign-sponsored regime change agenda. Mr James’ report has gone even further than Mr Moyo’s in that it regrets that the opposition MDC has split and weakened itself to such an extent that the LSZ has to fill the gap by escalating its "judicial activism" against the State.

But since the LSZ is a national statutory organisation and part of the State, the question of its sectarian and partisan politics must first be put into a historical context, of which many members of the society may not be aware.

The historical context reveals that even after the presidencies of both Moyo and James, the leaders of the LSZ will for some time continue to be tempted to pursue partisan, neo-liberal and foreign-funded agendas. In other words, our concern should never be, and has never been, about Moyo or James, although whoever is the incumbent leader does determine the extent to which the foreign agenda is pursued, at what cost it is pursued and in what style. The substance of the foreign agenda pursued by various LSZ leaders is mostly determined outside Zimbabwe and this can be documented, especially for the period 1987 to 2006.

In response to the threat of national liberation movements in former British colonies — in response to the use of the UN system to manage decolonisation instead of suppressing it — the British, with the help of the United States, chose three post-independence institutions through which they would continue to intervene in the internal affairs of liberated former colonies. These institutions were invariably the military, the judiciary (with its British-made constitution), and the civil service.

In the case of Zimbabwe, however, the almost complete success of the armed struggle against the Smith regime produced a preponderance of liberation cadres within the reconstructed army, making it very difficult to rely on the army to smuggle Anglo-American interventions in the country after 1980.

The armed struggle and the 1987 Unity Accord also meant that too many public service jobs went to former guerillas and their allies, thereby eroding the white Rhodesian core of the colonial civil service. This left the judiciary and the Law Society of Zimbabwe as the most reliable and pliable conduits for Anglo-American propaganda, influence and interventionist initiatives.

The need for such intervention and influence became more acute in the late 1980s because of the disintegration of the bipolar concept and system of international relations based on the Cold War. As long as the Cold War remained the key framework of world politics, interventions in the backwaters of the Anglo-American camp could always be justified on the basis of anti-communism. Once the Cold War was perceived to be over, a new ideology was needed as a pretext for intervention.

To make matters worse, the UN system would have weakened the Anglo-American camp if its focus had continued to be intervention in international conflicts. There would be little justification for Anglo-American intervention in regions where nations and states were at peace with one another.

Therefore a world perceived to be unipolar, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, required a new pretext for intervention in internal affairs of other nations. It also required a new role for the UN, away from intervening in international conflicts. Many UN multilateral agencies were therefore transformed into NGO-like bodies for bilateral intervention. The chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Jesse Helmz, articulated this new imperialist approach to the UN at the Security Council on January 20 2000.

The new ideology was human rights, interpreted strictly politically and with an individualistic rather than a collective focus. And the new role for the UN system was intervention in internal national conflicts. The UN was now expected, not just to keep the peace among nations, but also to make peace among nationalities and political parties within nations, meaning that the UN was now to be used to change and make governments as well.

This is the meaning of the regime change agenda. This explains why Mrs Anna Tibaijuka and the leaders of the LSZ would so brazenly depart from their traditional core business to worry about talks between Zanu-PF and the MDC, to worry about the weakening of the latter and to speculate on a government of national unity for a Zimbabwe which is not at war. With human rights replacing anti-communism and regime change replacing peace among states, the British, with the help of the North Americans, set up a series of seminars to retrain the judiciaries of former British colonies in order to consolidate Anglo-American control and influence in those countries.

The most prestigious of the retraining programmes was a series called "Developing Human Rights Jurisprudence: The Domestic (or National) Application of International Human Rights Norms".

The entire set of seven or more seminars was administered by the (British) Commonwealth Secretariat. The most persistent and consistent financial sponsor was the US-based Ford Foundation. A judge from the United States attended five out of the seven seminars, although the seminars never focused on the question of domesticating international human rights norms within US legal practice or in US courts!

The importance of this massive Anglo-American intervention over a period of almost 10 years is appreciated if we understand two things: In their claims to be objective and impartial, lawyers and judges are the last people to accept that they are trained in ideology and motivated by ideological inclinations and prejudices. Yet in terms of their training and daily work they routinely engage in interpretations, formulations and judgments which are moral, ethical, philosophical, cultural, historical, ideological and even literary.

These interpretations, formulations, ethics and judgments become even more coloured in their potential for prejudice when transferred from an Anglo-American base and source to a Zimbabwean or Indian or Namibian application.

Even within the same historical context and the same society, Jerry S. Cohen and Morton Mintz tell us that legal training and practice is so ideological and cultural that the lawyer and the judge is the modern-day equivalent of Plato’s Philosopher-King.

The authors refer to US Judge Learned Hand, who in 1803 demonstrated how legal training and practice in Western society has been steeped in Western religion, philosophy, literature and history so much that every judge in that society must read scores of writers from Socrates and Plato to Shakespeare, Milton, Machiavelli and Marx in order to know the full meaning of his or her work.

According to Judge Learned Hand:

"The words he (the judge) must construe are empty vessels into which he can pour nearly anything (any meaning) he will. (Judges) must be aware that there are before them more than verbal problems; more than final solutions cast in generalisations of universal applicability. They must be aware of the changing social tensions in every society which make it an organism; which demand new schemata of adaptation; which will disrupt it, if rigidly confined."

This means: When lawyers and judges from Zimbabwe and other former colonies agree to be tutored at a seminar by legal experts from the UK and US on the alleged deficiencies of the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights, they are not receiving pure and natural jurisprudence or God-made revelations. They are listening to repetitions, conventions, and constructions forged out of a loaded language, a loaded language which white men and women have been loading and unloading for their benefit for five hundred years.

Reading all the seven declarations or conclusions made at the Anglo-American-sponsored seminar series, it is clear that most of the participants were either unaware or they did not care about the social and global tensions motivating the Anglo-American sponsors and strategists to engage in such a massive cross-cultural programme of judicial intervention. The whole programme of judicial intervention was treated as natural and self-evident by the participants, though not by the sponsors and planners.

However, when one reads outside these seminars, one finds that the project made strategic sense in terms of Anglo-American anxieties about a disintegrating bipolar world and a potential multi-polar one. The human rights doctrine pushed by lawyers and judges with corporate sponsorship was intended to be the new ideology for unipolarism and neoliberalism which the seminars sold as globalisation and universalisation. The new ideology’s impact on lawyers and judges was expected to change the destinies of nations in favour of the sponsors.

What is paradoxical is the fact that the attempt to universalise a neoliberal human rights ideology should be marketed as a promotion of judicial independence which was again seen as part and parcel of the promotion of judicial activism!

Charles Kaminwa quotes the Honourable Justice Dame Silvia Cartwright of New Zealand, whose definition of judicial independence is, in fact, the opposite of judicial activism, but must include an acute awareness of the ways in which the law and legal practice are inevitably motivated by ideological concerns and orientations which may result in prejudicial interpretations of the law and miscarriages of justice. In other words, lawyers and judges should not pretend to be ideologically innocent the way those attending the Anglo-American-sponsored seminars seemed to do. According to Kaminwa’s citation of Cartwright:

"Judicial independence is a principle which exists to enable judges to deliver impartial justice, freed from any improper pressure and influence from any source. As a rule, judges will think first of improper pressure which might be applied from an external source such as parliament, the media or lobby groups.

"There is, however, another influence which, I suggest, is a more insidious, potentially harmful and complex obstacle to judicial impartiality. The predisposition to particular world views in every human being is the product of life experiences which influence decision making.

Each judge, on appointment, promises to do justice to all people without fear or favour, affection or ill will. The on-going attempt to do just that in spite of our in-built prejudices, be they conservative or liberal, is an almost insuperable hurdle to delivering even-handed justice. Selecting the right judicial material, striving to have a balance of appropriately qualified judges and training those judges is one way of ensuring that natural prejudices . . . are recognised and confronted."

The judicial seminars organised by Anglo-American interests for former British colonies, while paying lip service to judicial independence, in fact sought to achieve the opposite, which is what we see in the leaders of the LSZ between 2000 and 2006.

The seminars neither recognised nor confronted Anglo-American prejudices against the interests and aspirations of the peoples of the former colonies. The seminars resulted in a declaration that the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights was an inferior Charter because of its attempt to address peculiar African aspirations not found in charters from elsewhere.

The seminars celebrated the alleged superiority of so-called universal human rights norms and prejudged as inferior all national laws incompatible with the supposedly universal norms. The seminars placed Britain, the EU and the US in the position of teachers of universal human rights, while the former British colonies, by virtue of being sponsored, became the pupils to be taught by the former.

The seminars dangled real inducements to lawyers, judges and even chief justices from the former British colonies while telling the same to demand total judicial independence from their own governments and societies. The inducements included free tickets to fly around the world and attend the seminars; donations of computers, software and databases; opportunities to get published through sponsored networks; offers of propaganda support through global media and through the courts if judicial activism and partisanship landed some of the lawyers in trouble with their governments; and offers of sponsorship of allied activist NGOs to do propaganda campaigns supportive of judicial activism and judicial activists. This is the context within which the tenure of former Chief Justice Anthony Gubbay and the reports of the presidents of LSZ should be understood.

All these things are not secrets at all. They are openly stated in the conclusions or declarations of the seminars. But they are not recognised or confronted as forms of ideological intervention with serious prejudicial consequences for entire nations and peoples.

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.

Opinion and Analysis

Principles must guide law society Herald 25 August 2006

herald

THE legal profession is supposed to be the conscience of society, that defines what is wrong and what is right using existing laws, and at all times ensures that offenders are thrown into prison or are sufficiently censured through fines or other measures.

In short, lawyers are supposed to interpret the law for the lay people so that they, too, can distinguish what is right from what is wrong.

Throughout the history of jurisprudence, lawyers have grouped themselves under umbrella associations that ensured continued adherence to the dictates of their calling.

The law becomes dirty if it is used for anything other than to guide and provide standards of acceptable behaviour to the public.

This is why we were shocked to hear the Law Society of Zimbabwe (LSZ), a body mandated to safeguard lawful behaviour, condemning the clampdown on illegal parallel market dealers and foreign currency peddlers soon after the launch of Project Sunrise/Zuva Rabuda/Ilanga Seliphumile by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe.

The society hid behind the usual platitudes of alleged human rights abuses, but seemed to have conveniently forgotten that an individual’s right ceases to be sacrosanct once it impinges on the rights of others.

And that is exactly what the illegal parallel market dealers, whose self-serving pursuits fed hyper-inflationary pressures that infringed the rights of an entire nation, were doing with impunity.

It is poignant to note that the LSZ also used the human rights line to oppose the land reform programme, as they sought to protect the perceived rights of 4 000-odd white commercial farmers at the expense of millions of landless black Zimbabweans.

But much bigger surprises were to come with the ongoing attempts to re-register National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) chairman Dr Lovemore Madhuku, who was disbarred 14 years ago after his conviction and incarceration on 15 counts of theft by conversion and one count of fraud involving $3 580 in clients’ trust funds.

Theft and fraud are the most heinous crimes a lawyer can commit, whose gravity increases if repeated over and over again like what Dr Madhuku did between January and September 1991, which effectively made him a habitual thief over an eight-month period.

This is why it is shocking that the LSZ is even considering re-registering him, especially at a time so many questions are hanging over his head, not least allegations of financial impropriety at the NCA.

Even his colleagues in the so-called Broad Alliance were forced to condemn him following the way he tinkered with the NCA constitution to give himself an illegal third term, in addition to allegedly hiring hoodlums to assault his opponents within the NCA.

Only last year, he compiled a sensational report alleging that the Government was beating up and killing political opponents, a dossier he failed to substantiate when called upon to do so. Such shameful behaviour cannot be expected from someone who has reformed.

What is, however, more disturbing are reports that Dr Madhuku’s case is being considered for political expediency, that it is part of a broader plan to cleanse him before his entry into politics under an MDC ticket.

While we do not begrudge Dr Madhuku his attempt to return to mainstream legal practice, what we take exception to is the politicisation of the application.

If ever he is to be readmitted, it should be on the merits of his case vis-à-vis the gravity of the crimes that led to his de-registration.

The same stringent criteria that saw previous LSZ executives register only four of the 23 lawyers struck off the register since 1980 should be applied to Dr Madhuku.