'Mnangagwa's Justice minister lied to the world'

ZIMBABWE'S civil society organisations (CSOs) have accused Justice minister Ziyambi Ziyambi of misrepresenting the country's human rights situation at the 107th session of the International Convention on Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) held in Geneva last week.

They said that most replies given by the Zimbabwean delegation failed to provide satisfactory responses.

ICERD committee expert and taskforce member Yeung Sik Yuen said Zimbabwe was not conforming to previous recommendations, which included that the country should revisit section 61 of the Prevention of Discrimination Act and section 42 of the Criminal Code.

"I am a bit disturbed by the fact that the delegation has just pushed aside the questions that I have asked. The head of delegation did not reply to the questions that I put forward to them,"  Yeung Sik Yuen said during the discussions.

"Some of these things that we have asked here were also discussed in the last country report and Zimbabwe was questioned on that," he added.

Ziyambi, who led the delegation, was at pains to explain whether the country's education system was free or not. On the Private Voluntary Organisation Amendment Bill, Ziyambi said:  "The PVO Bill is not discriminatory in any way. The PVO Bill is regulating a sector. All those conventions that we need to domesticate, we have done that. We do not have recorded cases of hate speech in the country. Hate speech in Zimbabwe is not targeted racially, but there is political hate speech. Our political parties are not racial."

On the Gukurahundi issue, Ziyambi said the National Peace and Reconciliation Commission (NPRC) would come up with a solution to appease the aggrieved families and Gukurahundi victims.

He said the NPRC was not meant to deal with the Gukurahundi issue, adding that traditional leaders were seized with the issue to put it to its conclusion.

"Soon after independence, we had a commotion. I also lost relatives to dissidents. We cannot arrest the Gukurahundi perpetrators because the issue was dealt with when Robert Mugabe (the late former Zimbabwean President) declared a general amnesty. If we continue to arrest those that partook in the atrocities it would be a violation of the general amnesty declaration," Ziyambi told the Geneva meeting.

He said ethnic minorities are not discriminated against, adding that government had initiated programmes to provide civil registration documents to ethnic minorities.

CSOs that include the Solidarity Centre, Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, Domestic Workers Association of Zimbabwe, African End Sexual Harassment Initiative, Zimbabwe Domestic and Allied Workers Union and the Vendors Initiative for Social and Economic Transformation, have, however, challenged government to investigate and prosecute all perpetrators of human rights abuses.

"The Zimbabwean government must investigate and prosecute human rights violations perpetrated by Chinese investors and their agents," the CSOs said.

"Government must obtain binding commitments from Chinese investors to respect human rights, including labour rights, as a condition of any investment agreement and exercise such rights under these agreements to ensure full compliance," they said.