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Zimbiti was highly critical of the harassment of the judges. "Justice Gubbay and Justice Ibrahim have served this country well," he said. "We are particularly concerned about Justice Nicholas McNally, an upright man who has never compromised with racism. During the colonial era he defended in court Catholic priests and others who were threatened with the death penalty for 'not reporting terrorists'."

As a result, Zimbiti said, an unjust law was then abolished.

Many people linked to human rights organizations and the MDC have accused most of the churches of being unwilling to criticize the government. A recent cartoon in a local daily newspaper portrayed the church licking the government's dirty boots.

But Densen Mafinyane, general secretary of the Zimbabwe Council of Churches (ZCC), which represents Zimbabwean mainstream Protestants, told ENI: "The church has always spoken [out], since the Lancaster House conference which brought independence to Zimbabwe in 1980, until now. The problem is that some people want the church to speak without the relevant facts."

Of the present difficulties, Mafinyane said that as the judiciary had been appointed by the executive, the two arms should be able to interact amicably. "As churches, we believe in reconciliation," said Mafinyane. "The politicians are shocked by the [court] judgments. But at the same time, the judges tell the politicians that 'we are only interpreting your own laws'.

"The executive and the judiciary have to resolve these problems by communicating amicably. What we are seeing now does not benefit anyone."

Andrew Wutawunashe, a spokesman for the Heads of Denominations in Zimbabwe, which holds regular meetings of church leaders, told ENI: "A judge feels he has to enforce the law, but the law he is to enforce no longer represents the current political system. So the solution lies in changing the constitution.

"As churches we are in the process of arranging a meeting between the government and farmers so that they all get out of the courts."

Early this month, the Zimbabwe Presbytery of the Uniting Presbyterian Church in Southern Africa, issued a statement agreeing that Zimbabwe needed land reform, but criticizing "the 'fast-track' program as being implemented by government." The presbytery also urged "the government to publicly affirm and uphold the rule of law in Zimbabwe, and cease from its political attack on the Zimbabwean judiciary."

British parliamentarian Francis Maude, who recently visited Harare, has called for the suspension of Zimbabwe's membership of the Commonwealth. "Suspending Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth would be the clearest way for its neighbors to show their condemnation of a regime whose reputation is infecting all of southern Africa," Maude states in a letter to the Guardian newspaper, London, published on 15 March. "To maintain that an African dictator should be judged by lower standards than we apply to ourselves is to condemn Zimbabweans to a worse life than they want for themselves." Maude was referring to calls for a "softly-softly" approach to the Mugabe government.

Copyright © 2001 ENI.

The U.S. State Department's Human Rights Report says the Zimbabwe government's "poor human rights record worsened significantly during the year [2000], and it committed serious abuses." The report details many of those abuses.

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March (Web-only) 2001, Vol. 45