Mugabe blasts West judicial system

President Robert Mugabe yesterday took a dig on the Western justice delivery system, saying it is fraught with unwitting bias, aimed at perpetuating imperial hegemonic interests. The western system, the President said, was not designed to serve real justice to Africans. They (Western courts) are never for justice. They're for the preservation of Western interests and hegemony. No white court serves real justice to an African.

"Instead of restitution, the white world does worse things - hauling Africans to unjust courts, murdering them as they did to Saddam Hussein (Iraq) and our bother Muammar Gaddafi (Libya)."

President Mugabe said this at the burial of national hero and renowned anti-sanctions activist, Senator Aguy Georgias, which also coincided with Unity Day celebrations.

Thousands of people from different parts of the country attended the burial at the National Heroes' Acre. Sen Georgias died last Friday at the age of 80 due to heart and kidney complications and was buried at the National Heroes' Acre.

Despite the apparent bias of the Western justice system, Sen Georgias was unfazed and challenged the Europeans in their backyard, said President Mugabe.

He said Sen Georgias stood firm on the side of the injured majority in his fight against the heinous illegal sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe by the European Union. "He (Sen Georgias) refused to submit to Western retribution," he said. "He never took it lying. He fought indefatigably, took the fight to the whiteman's court literally. He challenged sanctions, using British and European court systems.

"He sought compensation for himself and his people, and used his little resources to seek justice the West will never grant us, the small people of this world. "He won that fight, won it not by way of material compensation or restitution, but by way of exposing the hypocrisy at the heart of Western legal systems."

President Mugabe said when the story of Zimbabwe's resistance to sanctions would eventually be written, Sen Georgias' name would rank high. On August 21, 2007, Sen Georgias took the British government to court over the illegal sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe including his company Trinity Engineering.

In his heads of argument, Sen Georgias said: "If, as we were made to believe, sanctions against Zimbabwe are meant to target those who are engaged in activities that seriously undermine democracy, respect for human rights and the rule of law in Zimbabwe, then why the economic malaise on the whole nation?"

Further, Sen Georgias argued, the travel ban on government leaders, on its own was not as significant in terms of impacting the national economy but it was the restrictions on financial resources, access to lines of credit and balance of payments support that were having the deleterious effect on the economy and causing hardships.

The lawsuit came after Sen Georgias on May 25, 2007, was denied entry into London enroute to New York where he was going to receive an international award for Trinity Engineering.

The British immigration authorities argued that they could not allow him entry because he was on the sanctions list. Although he lost the matter in the London Court of Appeal, he appealed to the General Court of the European Union in Luxemburg.

The case is yet to be finalised.

His initial appeal was dismissed but it exposed that the EU common position on the travel ban and financial restrictions on Zimbabwe was not adopted on EU public policy grounds, but rather as a foreign policy stance. In one of his many fights with the Europeans, Sen Georgias won a case against deportation of his children studying in London.

However, the sanctions case, which largely touched on the nerves of the economy, was an uphill task. Giving a detailed eulogy about Sen Georgias, President Mugabe said the renowned industrialist exhausted his personal finances fighting the sanctions.

He said Sen Georgias approached him and the government for assistance and he took him to the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez who promised to assist.

Locally, President Mugabe said, Sen Georgias was also a hero who successfully challenged high interest rates charged by banks against the in duplum rule.

"He successfully challenged such practices in our courts, in the process securing a judgment that promised relief to many.

"But there has been lots of resistance to operationalising the tenets of that judgment, to the great detriment of our economy."