Opinion / Columnist
Opportunities for truth in Zanu-PF battles
25 Jan 2015 at 06:07hrs | Views
Kufa kwemurume hubuda ura, so goes the Shona proverb. Loosely translated, it means a man is not dead until the intestines are out.
It appears the knives are out in Zanu-PF and the battle will not conclude until we see intestines. With a rich history of violence in that party, I am afraid we may soon see the intestines literally.
In as much as this may have sound humorous, it is actually very sad for our democracy which, since 1980 has been trying to find its feet. For a system that for over three decades refused to rejuvenate its leadership, this will be neither easy nor unbloody. The leadership has never befriended democracy and they will certainly not learn now.
The stakes are too high to start lessons in how to trust the judgment of the majority with the future of the party, and besides, an old dog can't learn new tricks.
But what worries us is not the possibility of the party consuming itself.
We will be fooling ourselves to think that a system that had a grip on our society by the neck for the past three decades can go down without doing harm to the society itself.
This is partly why I think this drama needs to be followed closely. Not only must we take notes, but we must also encourage those who still believe in some modicum of justice, democracy and rule of law to seek noble ideals, even amid the unbearable heat of hell.
We know that one of the great tortures of hell is that even in the thickness of darkness and unbearable stench, the ugly monsters still see each other and smell each other, and prospects for repentance are almost nil.
This has been proven in the past week with the vanguished faction in Zanu-PF seeking to nullify the outcome of the December congress. Surprisingly, one of the options now available to them - who never believed in rule of law - is legal recourse.
We do not need to prove here why we say they never believed in the rule of law, except to remind Didymus Mutasa that during his tenure as the minister of State for National Security in December 2008, human rights defender Jestina Mukoko was kidnapped by state agents and tortured for 19 days.
When the courts ordered the law enforcement agents to release her, Mutasa, then a Cde, openly defied the court alleging that an unarmed civilian doing her work was a threat to national security. For the record, Mukoko was tortured thoroughly and sustained serious injuries.
But despite this ugly record, I would encourage the crew to still approach the courts for redress. I do this for a number of reasons from a transitional justice point of view.
First and foremost, I think we must believe in the rule of law even in a place where is does not yet exists. In every conflict, before an intervention we must always do a diagnosis - what exactly are we dealing with? In this case we are dealing with a political conflict in the Zanu-PF war room.
It is a failure by Zanu-PF to transform from a bush-style military outfit to a modern democratic movement.
This failure showed itself in the inability to grow a broad-based leadership system and instead remained stuck to the archaic personality cultism. (I may add that the opposition is currently getting into the same trap).
This led to failure to develop a clear succession plan. We can already see that this complexity is something much more sophisticated than what our justice system can deal with. Our justice system is built to deal with common crimes like stock theft and the like, not serious political and economic crimes like the ones committed in our country.
In fact, it is hard to imagine that the current bench can reach a verdict to overturn the Zanu-PF congress and expect that the leader of Zanu-PF with such a legacy of bashing the judiciary will obey such a verdict. It will never happen.
Nevertheless, I think the aggrieved parties deserve their day in court and must go for it, of course as part of a more comprehensive political strategy. What good will it achieve, some may wonder, to go to a court knowing you will never get the desired result.
For a start it opens a public platform for truth recovery. It is one thing to read of an injustice from investigative reports by journalists, but it is another to have hard evidence and testimonies entered into a public judicial record.
Those who have litigated on behalf of victims of human rights violations will agree with me that sometimes that opportunity to put a perpetrator on the stand and confront him with truth gives a sense of justice to some victims.
A judicial process allows us to move from assertions and assumptions to real evidence of how an injustice was perpetrated. This is why there was so much expectation when MDC-T filed their election petition in August 2013.
Many people expected the opposition to take that as an opportunity to show the world, blow by blow, how the election was stolen and let the world judge, though faith in the judiciary maybe lacking. By failing to produce this evidence, they disappointed many believers in democracy.
Mutasa and crew are faced with the same challenge, to prove - not to the judges seated at the Supreme Court, but to the society at large - the truth of how justice and democracy were overthrown in Zanu-PF.
This is not to be misread as alleging that there was ever democracy and justice in Zanu-PF at anytime in the near past. Only that now society has an opportunity to hear it from those within Zanu-PF. This information is valuable. If not for the judiciary, it is for history and for truth.
Secondly, regardless of who is doing it, this will be a good effort at challenging impunity. Zimbabwe has a rich history of judicial hooliganism and at times this has overflowed to bashing of the legal profession.
Signs of such hooliganism were seen in August 2013 when the judiciary tried to crucify the lawyers for the "sins" of their clients. It has since surfaced again in the past week with state media trying to threaten the legal profession against litigating against Zanu-PF.
These issues go to the heart of rule of law. Rule of law does not simply mean the presence of a police force, judges and courtrooms.
It means believing in a government limited by law, formal legality and "the rule of law, not man." (Tamanaha: 2012). After decades of one-man misrule, I have no doubt many Zimbabweans do agree with Aristotle; "The rule of law is better than that of any individual.''
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Dzikamai Bere contributes to this column in his personal capacity. The views contained here are not the views of the organisations he is associated with. For feedback write to dzikamaibere@gmail.com
It appears the knives are out in Zanu-PF and the battle will not conclude until we see intestines. With a rich history of violence in that party, I am afraid we may soon see the intestines literally.
In as much as this may have sound humorous, it is actually very sad for our democracy which, since 1980 has been trying to find its feet. For a system that for over three decades refused to rejuvenate its leadership, this will be neither easy nor unbloody. The leadership has never befriended democracy and they will certainly not learn now.
The stakes are too high to start lessons in how to trust the judgment of the majority with the future of the party, and besides, an old dog can't learn new tricks.
But what worries us is not the possibility of the party consuming itself.
We will be fooling ourselves to think that a system that had a grip on our society by the neck for the past three decades can go down without doing harm to the society itself.
This is partly why I think this drama needs to be followed closely. Not only must we take notes, but we must also encourage those who still believe in some modicum of justice, democracy and rule of law to seek noble ideals, even amid the unbearable heat of hell.
We know that one of the great tortures of hell is that even in the thickness of darkness and unbearable stench, the ugly monsters still see each other and smell each other, and prospects for repentance are almost nil.
This has been proven in the past week with the vanguished faction in Zanu-PF seeking to nullify the outcome of the December congress. Surprisingly, one of the options now available to them - who never believed in rule of law - is legal recourse.
We do not need to prove here why we say they never believed in the rule of law, except to remind Didymus Mutasa that during his tenure as the minister of State for National Security in December 2008, human rights defender Jestina Mukoko was kidnapped by state agents and tortured for 19 days.
When the courts ordered the law enforcement agents to release her, Mutasa, then a Cde, openly defied the court alleging that an unarmed civilian doing her work was a threat to national security. For the record, Mukoko was tortured thoroughly and sustained serious injuries.
But despite this ugly record, I would encourage the crew to still approach the courts for redress. I do this for a number of reasons from a transitional justice point of view.
First and foremost, I think we must believe in the rule of law even in a place where is does not yet exists. In every conflict, before an intervention we must always do a diagnosis - what exactly are we dealing with? In this case we are dealing with a political conflict in the Zanu-PF war room.
It is a failure by Zanu-PF to transform from a bush-style military outfit to a modern democratic movement.
This failure showed itself in the inability to grow a broad-based leadership system and instead remained stuck to the archaic personality cultism. (I may add that the opposition is currently getting into the same trap).
This led to failure to develop a clear succession plan. We can already see that this complexity is something much more sophisticated than what our justice system can deal with. Our justice system is built to deal with common crimes like stock theft and the like, not serious political and economic crimes like the ones committed in our country.
In fact, it is hard to imagine that the current bench can reach a verdict to overturn the Zanu-PF congress and expect that the leader of Zanu-PF with such a legacy of bashing the judiciary will obey such a verdict. It will never happen.
Nevertheless, I think the aggrieved parties deserve their day in court and must go for it, of course as part of a more comprehensive political strategy. What good will it achieve, some may wonder, to go to a court knowing you will never get the desired result.
For a start it opens a public platform for truth recovery. It is one thing to read of an injustice from investigative reports by journalists, but it is another to have hard evidence and testimonies entered into a public judicial record.
Those who have litigated on behalf of victims of human rights violations will agree with me that sometimes that opportunity to put a perpetrator on the stand and confront him with truth gives a sense of justice to some victims.
A judicial process allows us to move from assertions and assumptions to real evidence of how an injustice was perpetrated. This is why there was so much expectation when MDC-T filed their election petition in August 2013.
Many people expected the opposition to take that as an opportunity to show the world, blow by blow, how the election was stolen and let the world judge, though faith in the judiciary maybe lacking. By failing to produce this evidence, they disappointed many believers in democracy.
Mutasa and crew are faced with the same challenge, to prove - not to the judges seated at the Supreme Court, but to the society at large - the truth of how justice and democracy were overthrown in Zanu-PF.
This is not to be misread as alleging that there was ever democracy and justice in Zanu-PF at anytime in the near past. Only that now society has an opportunity to hear it from those within Zanu-PF. This information is valuable. If not for the judiciary, it is for history and for truth.
Secondly, regardless of who is doing it, this will be a good effort at challenging impunity. Zimbabwe has a rich history of judicial hooliganism and at times this has overflowed to bashing of the legal profession.
Signs of such hooliganism were seen in August 2013 when the judiciary tried to crucify the lawyers for the "sins" of their clients. It has since surfaced again in the past week with state media trying to threaten the legal profession against litigating against Zanu-PF.
These issues go to the heart of rule of law. Rule of law does not simply mean the presence of a police force, judges and courtrooms.
It means believing in a government limited by law, formal legality and "the rule of law, not man." (Tamanaha: 2012). After decades of one-man misrule, I have no doubt many Zimbabweans do agree with Aristotle; "The rule of law is better than that of any individual.''
-----------------
Dzikamai Bere contributes to this column in his personal capacity. The views contained here are not the views of the organisations he is associated with. For feedback write to dzikamaibere@gmail.com
Source - thestandard
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