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Shadows
and lies: Interview with Beatrice Mtetwa
PBS Frontline/World (US)
June 28,
2006
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/zimbabwe504/interview_beatrice.html
Prominent human
rights lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa has spent years defending Zimbabwean
journalists, many of whom have been arrested for their work. Mtetwa
represented journalists from the Daily News, Zimbabwe's
only independent daily newspaper, until it was shut down by the
government in 2003. She has also defended international correspondents,
including British and American journalists arrested inside the country
while reporting on Zimbabwe's increasingly controversial elections.
In this interview, Mtetwa talks about her ongoing efforts to protect
press freedoms and the risks her job entails, including her own
arrest and her assault while in police custody in 2003. She also
explains how the ruling Zanu-PF Party continues to "mutilate" the
country's legislature -- it has amended the constitution 17 times
-- to stay in power. In 2005, Mtetwa received the Press Freedom
Award from the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.
What motivates
you? And why on earth would somebody want to do your job when the
ruling party keeps on stacking the legal odds so heavily against
you?
Beatrice
Mtetwa: Why do I do it? Well, certainly not for money,
there's not much of that. I just feel very strongly that we need
to continue showing up the system for what it is. We need to make
sure we've got a record of this period in the history of this country.
We need to litigate, we need to go to court to say the law says
this, and see how it is interpreted because I feel very strongly
that if anyone were to look back at this - you know, some of the
cases we take to court - they have very good records to show how
things were done. It is easy to say a judge is not being impartial;
it's easy to say that, if you've taken a case before them and you
see how they've made a decision. We go to the Supreme Court all
the time with constitutional challenges, not because we expect to
win. But for me it is very important that we must give the Supreme
Court judges the opportunity to confirm what they are there for.
We take the cases there; we know we are going to lose them, not
because it's a bad case, but because the judges are politically
compromised. And you are only able to say, "See what we mean?" Because
the judgment will be there, it will speak for itself. And we'll
be able to use it in the future to say that this person is not fit
to be a judge in this new era. They should be out.
Are human
rights lawyers ever threatened by the ruling party, or the police?
Have you ever been harassed yourself?
You do get threatened;
you do get harassed. I was beaten up one time by a policeman. I've
been shoved around. But I do not consider that I've had it as bad
as some of my other colleagues because, generally, the police know
that if you do something to me, I'm not going to take it lying down.
I'll publicize it, I'll do everything that needs to be done to be
sure that everybody knows what happened to me. And also, I worked
for the government in the 1980s, and you find that a lot of the
people who are in these positions of authority are people that I
know very well. Sometimes it's a bit difficult for those in authority
to be as rough with me as they would like to be. Because they know
that I am not a political person, that I'm doing this job... because
it is the right thing to do, not because there is any glory or cash
to it and not because I'm trying to antagonize the government. No,
I'm doing it because it's a job that's got to be done.
Can you
describe what happened when you were say you were beaten by a policeman?
I was assaulted
by a policeman in October 2003. I had been in a car hijacking. In
retrospect, I think I probably had been followed. I had an attempted
hijack on the first of October in 2003 and then a second one on
the 11th of October. And these were people that had been following
me. And when the police were called, instead of the policeman coming
there to really assist me, he said, "Oh, it's you. Human rights
lawyer. Now we are going to show you who you are." They locked me
up, and they said this happened to me because I was drunk. I said,
"Fine, if I'm drunk, take me to have a Breathalyzer test or a blood
test" - which they've got to do within two hours. But they didn't.
They drove around with me, and he beat me up. His attitude was that
when you talk about police brutality, you'll now be talking from
experience. I wear glasses normally, and he smashed my glasses in
and the glass was broken. It was actually quite traumatic, and I
think that was actually the worst I've ever had in terms of being
beaten up.
Have you
ever been under surveillance?
Oh, yes, quite
a number of times. I always feel that I am under surveillance -
when they think that I might lead them to one of my clients when
they don't know where he is. When Andrew Meldrum, the American journalist,
said they were after him, I was under surveillance because they
thought that I would lead them to where he was. I used to think
this was very silly because the last thing that I would do if I
knew where he was would be to drive to where he is. And it's very
funny because they [surveillance people] always use the same cars;
they just stick out like a sore thumb. So you're able to have a
nice joy ride and check out how they're going to react in certain
instances. So the job does have some light moments when some of
the state officials bungle things. I'll tell you one story when
they bungled big time. They wanted to deport one American evangelist,
and obviously there was no basis for deporting her, but she was
suspected of conniving with opposition politicians, so they started
an operation they called Operation Zion. When they went to her premises
to start the operation to have her deported, they left the entire
file behind on her premises. She called me, and I said, "Just keep
it." It was hilarious because it had everything, all their notes
saying this is what we'll say she did, the entire plan... When we
went to court to stop her deportation, we just used their notes
saying that this has all been dreamed up. Nobody even came to defend
that case.
Robert
Mugabe, for all his brutality, is probably...
Oh, he's very
bright, he's very effective.
It seems
as if there are a multitude of functioning laws in Zimbabwe . Are
they more form than function?
The most incredible
thing about Zimbabwe is that it looks like it is there, like it
is working, like things are being done properly. The government
doesn't go out there and do things without following the law. What
they do is go out there and change the law and make it to what they
want it to be. So there's all this veneer of respectability, you
know, of a system that works. Why is it necessary, for instance,
to amend the constitution to oust the jurisdiction of the courts
when agricultural land is acquired? Because the government wants
to say, "We are acting in terms of the law." But is that a fair
law? Of course not. The government wants to be legitimate, and for
it to be legitimate, it will go out of its way to make laws that
will legitimize the illegitimate. That's basically how they're doing
it.
How has
this affected the fairness of elections?
We've got elections
every couple of years, but the electoral laws are absolutely unbelievable
because they are made to suit the particular system that the government
favors. The government appoints the electoral officials, who will
run the elections the way they want them to be. Zimbabwe is a signatory
to the election guidelines that the Southern African government
community signed. When the elections came last year, we actually
presented the government with a report on the elections and how
unfair the whole electoral system was and how the election laws
do not actually follow the guidelines that we agreed to in 2004.
The government's minister of Justice responded by filing papers
saying that those are mere guidelines and that we are not bound
by them. Yet they are the minimum standards for the conduct of elections
in the region. Why should you pass laws that do not comply with
the minimum standards that you have agreed to as a region if you
actually want truly independent elections?
Has the
president ever said anything directly about you?
I don't think
he even knows I exist.
I'd be
surprised if he doesn't - everyone else does. Describe some of the
things known to have happened to people in police custody.
When people are
in police custody, anything can happen. You can get beaten up; you
can be tortured; you can be denied access to your relatives, food,
lawyer; you may not be taken to the toilet. I had one client who
I went to see in prison custody; he was given torn prison uniforms
that exposed his private parts, and this wasn't just torn, it had
actually been worn previously by someone who had had diarrhea and
it had not been washed. It's just so dehumanizing. It's not enough
that you've been put in custody; they really, really want to break
your spirit.
Do people
in opposition groups face a lot of legal restrictions?
The problem with
Zimbabwe right now is that from looking at it and considering the
political landscape, one can say, yes, there is political diversity.
But there's so much you can't do. The laws that the government is
creating make it virtually impossible for you to function properly,
whether in opposition or as a human rights defender. The Public
Ordinance Security Act criminalizes normal meetings that people
must have if they are in politics. That law has never been applied
to people in the ruling party. So opposition politicians have difficulty
just meeting their constituencies because they must first go and
inform the police that they want to have this meeting. They cannot
organize protest marches because the law criminalizes that. You
must get authority from the police to organize a normal march. And,
of course, you are not going to get that. We had the mayor of the
capital city of Harare arrested a couple of years ago because he
was holding a meeting with residents of Harare in counsel property;
these were counsel premises. And the police went and arrested him
and said it was an illegal political meeting. Fortunately, the courts
refused to place him on remand because the judge said, "Well, if
a mayor cannot go out and meet residents, which is what he's there
to do, that's his job, then I don't know why he'd be there. The
police have no business stopping this kind of meeting." So clearly,
if you are in opposition - and this was an opposition mayor - the
government creates by way of legislation, by way of zealousness
and general harassment, a way of stopping people going to meetings.
There are so many of these examples that on a practical level, opposition
politicians cannot function normally.
Who makes
the law in Zimbabwe today?
The ruling party
currently has a majority in parliament, and obviously, whatever
laws the government wants to pass, they pass... Whether the law
is constitutional or not, they can disregard any protest that the
law might be unconstitutional because they'll be able to railroad
it through using their majority status. The constitution is very
easy to change in Zimbabwe if you have at least a 75 percent majority,
and the ruling party has that. So basically, the ruling party is
making the laws and obviously they make laws that suit them, that
ensure they continue being in power, that ensure they make life
as difficult as possible for those they perceive as being in opposition
or those who are opposed to how they are running the country.
How many
amendments have there been to the constitution? And what effect
has this had?
The constitution
has been mutilated at least 17 times as of last year, and I have
no doubt there will be a further mutilation. I use the word "mutilation"
deliberately because the ruling party has not amended the constitution
to give people greater rights, greater freedoms. With every amendment,
they have eaten away at the freedoms that have been there - sometimes,
in fact, to reverse the gains that have been made in court. Prior
to the Supreme Court being reconstituted, we had a lot of very good
constitutional judgments where the Supreme Court would interpret
the constitution to give greater rights to people. Each time the
Supreme Court gave a judgment that gave greater freedoms, the ruling
party would run back to parliament to pass an amendment that would
take away the right that the Supreme Court would have given. So
we've had a lot of amendments brought in specifically to try to
defeat what the Supreme Court would have given. The most recent
amendment, No. 17, was basically to say that if your land is taken
from you, sorry, the courts have no jurisdiction whatsoever. Whichever
way you look at it, it's clearly unconstitutional because if the
government takes an action against you and deprives you of certain
property rights, you should be able to get a court to determine
whether they are fair or not, particularly in Zimbabwe's situation,
where the land issue has been used to benefit a few well-connected
individuals.
How has
the land issue been defined by the courts?
There are a number
of cases where black farmers' land has been taken and I have been
able to go to court and say there is no color imbalance that is
being redressed here. If you're taking a farm from a black Zimbabwean
who bought it in 1995, when the government had first choice to buy
that land, and the government said I don't want it and you buy it
- and you have that land taken away from you and given to a ruling
party person, clearly it is wrong for that person not to have the
court entertain him. Farmers cannot go to court now because Amendment
No. 17 says it's outside the court's jurisdiction as far as agricultural
land is concerned. So these people will never be able to challenge
the right to acquire their land comparatively when in fact they
were supposed to be the beneficiaries. I'm sorry, that just cannot
be constitutional.
You also
have a lot of clients who have been journalists.
Zimbabwe has very
repressive media laws, and those laws have made it difficult for
journalists to practice their profession freely in Zimbabwe. As
a result, we get more arrests in the media, and I found myself having
a lot more journalist cases from 2002 when new information and protection
of privacy laws came in that criminalized a lot of journalistic
work. If you write a story the government doesn't like, you can
be arrested. The Access to Information and Protection of Privacy
Act is a very poor name. Because it really doesn't give anybody
access to information; if anything, it takes away access to information.
It was this law that shut down at least four newspapers in Zimbabwe.
So there's nothing that makes the media accessible. It is a very
big piece of legislation; it makes it impossible to have independent
media houses that can report independently because they get shut
down. The government determines who gets registered [to operate]
and who doesn't. Journalists can be locked up because they have
reported what the government regards as falsehoods. You can go to
jail for at least two years if you're convicted under that law.
It forces media houses to register every two years, which is crazy
because you go into the media to publish as a business. And to answer
every two years as to whether or not you'll remain in operation
means you actually make the media self-censoring. Journalists start
to self-censor because you don't want to be without a job tomorrow.
At the end of the day, this piece of legislation literally limits
the flow of information in Zimbabwe because people are afraid of
doing their job because they could be arrested or shut down.
What about
judges? Are they subjected to the same sort of self-censorship?
The judiciary
in Zimbabwe took a turn for the worse for us lawyers in 2001 when
judges who were seen as independent were forced off the bench. And
judges who it is generally believed look at things from the government
viewpoint were appointed. For me, the system requires a complete
overhaul because any judges who are there are dangerous because
they are quite happy to do the politicians' dirty work, to interpret
the law to suit those who made them judges. Even if there's a change,
you cannot trust them. If you're willing to be used by the ruling
party now, it means tomorrow you'll be willing to be used by whoever
will be in the ruling party next, and that's just as bad. We need
to get completely new judges who would be appointed in terms of
a very transparent selection procedure.
Have judges
fled the country because of judgments they've passed?
Certainly some
judges have been forced to flee the country after direct threats.
There was a judge who was dealing with one of the newspaper closure
cases. He was threatened by people in government and he fled - literally
fled the country. Those who left did so because they couldn't continue
working under conditions where they were constantly under threat.
The Supreme Court heard the war veterans demonstrate, and they were
jumping all over the court while the court was in session, but nothing
happened to those people. So clearly judges have been threatened.
Even those who have remained from the old era - maybe two or so
in the high courts - are afraid. They have stayed, but the freedom
is just not there anymore. I don't think members of the judiciary
feel that they have the freedom to really be judges, impartial judges,
without interference. They know if they give judgments that aren't
popular, they could lose their jobs and find themselves in deep
trouble.
This interview
between Alexis Bloom and Beatrice Mtetwa took place in February
2006 at a guesthouse in Harare. It has been edited for clarity.
Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.
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