Independence, political interference and corruption
Corrupt judges and land rights in Zimbabwe Gugulethu Moyo1 The independence of Zimbabwe’s judiciary has been the subject of many reports over the past five years and there is a general consensus that it is no longer independent and impartial.2 By the end of the 1990s, Zimbabwe’s Supreme Court had established an international reputation as an independent court that vigorously upheld human rights, although its human rights jurisprudence was mainly focused on civil and political rights. The high court also previously played a positive role in upholding fundamental rights. Beginning in 2000, the government began a purge that resulted in most independent judges being replaced by judges known to owe allegiance to the ruling party. This reconstituted judiciary has conspicuously failed to protect fundamental rights in the face of serious violation by legislative provisions and executive action. Corruption has also played a role in compromising judicial independence because the allocation of expropriated farms to several judges has made them more beholden to the executive. Most accounts of the trajectory of judicial independence in Zimbabwe inextricably link its decline to government policies adopted in 2000 aimed at accelerating the protracted land reform process.3 The need for more equitable land distribution has been one of Zimbabwe’s most intractable problems. At the beginning of black majority rule in 1980 about 6,000 white commercial farmers controlled 40 per cent of the most fertile land while seven million blacks were crowded into largely dry ‘communal areas’. In the first decade of majority rule the government was faced with legal constraints, entrenched in the constitution that required it to pay prompt and adequate compensation if it wanted to appropriate land and, if the original owner requested, to do so externally in foreign exchange. This prevented it from carrying out meaningful re-distribution. Even after these constitutional restraints were removed, however, the government failed to adopt policies that addressed the problem effectively or to cooperate with international offers to provide financial assistance to an orderly programme. Towards the end of the 1990s, the economy was in decline and the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU PF) party was in danger of losing support. A new party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), had attracted a considerable following and posed a threat to the ruling party’s hold on power. To counteract this, ZANU PF exploited the hunger for land felt by millions of black peasants to launch a populist, ‘fast-track’ land reform 1 Gugulethu Moyo, International Bar Association, London, United Kingdom. 2 See www.un.org/News/briefings/docs/2003/db021903.doc.htm. See also Justice in Zimbabwe, a report by the Legal Resources Foundation, Zimbabwe, September 2002, www.hrforumzim.com; and Karla Saller, The Judicial Institution in Zimbabwe (Cape Town: Siber Ink, 2004). 3 See Arnold Tsunga, ‘The Legal Profession and the Judiciary as Human Rights Defenders in Zimbabwe: Separation or Consolidation of Powers on the Part of the State?’, Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (unpublished, 2003); and The Independent (Zimbabwe), 7 April 2004.
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