Back to Index

An Analysis of the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum Legal Cases, 1998-2006
Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum
June 2006

Read Statement on the Analysis of Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum Legal Cases 1998 - 2006

Download this document
- Acrobat PDF version (391KB)
If you do not have the free Acrobat reader on your computer, download it from the Adobe website by clicking here.

Introduction
The Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum (Human Rights Forum) was established after the Food Riots in 1998 as human rights groups and NGOs in Harare swung into action following the many reports of human rights violations. This group, a loose alliance of NGOs, provided assistance to detainees, persons complaining of human rights violations and ill-treatment, and produced a report on the riots which was forwarded to the President and Parliament in support of the request for an independent commission of inquiry.

There was no response from the government, and the Human Rights Forum lobbied the UN Human Rights Committee at its meeting in 1998 to consider the implementation by Zimbabwe of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. When the Committee produced its final report in September 1998, it made a strong statement endorsing the call by the Human Rights Forum for an independent commission of inquiry. The government took no steps either to constitute a commission of inquiry or to compensate those who suffered human rights violations, so the Human Rights Forum decided to go ahead and support the request by survivors for civil claims against the government. Forty-two suits were filed in Zimbabwean courts against the Zimbabwe Republic Police, the Minister of Home Affairs, and the Minister of Defence. The government, through the office of the Attorney-General’s Civil Division department, indicated that it would contest all claims. The majority of these cases have been concluded, with the government either settling the matters out of court or through judgments handed down by the High Court.¹

As the human rights situation continued to deteriorate, the Human Rights Forum was not disbanded after the Food Riots but continued to monitor the human rights situation. From the year 2000 violence escalated in Zimbabwe, with the aftermath of the Referendum,² invasion of whiteowned commercial farms, and, for the first time in Zimbabwe’s history, there was a real opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC),³ that gave ZANU(PF) a run for its money in the June 2000 parliamentary elections. The election period in 2000 was fraught with violence, and the Human Rights Forum continued to give support to the victims and write reports both for the government to consider and for the wider international community.

In 2000, the government instituted a National Youth Service, widely believed to be a paramilitary force for the ruling ZANU(PF). This group is referred to as the ‘youth militia’ or ‘Green Bombers’ because of colour of their uniforms. The militia unleashed a reign of terror on the nation and it was evident that they had the State’s permission; a report by the Solidarity Peace Trust details the activities of this group.⁴ The government’s violent campaign continued in 2001 through to the Presidential Election in March 2002.⁵ This phase saw the persistent decline of the economy, rule of law, and the independence of the judiciary.⁶

In 2003, human rights violations continued with the same intensity during mayoral, local, and parliamentary by-elections.⁷ Violence escalated again in mid-2003, when the MDC began mass protests with the stay-aways, the army being called in to buttress the riot squad even though the mass protests were largely peaceful. There has been no improvement in the adherence to human rights between 2003 and the present. Although it is noteworthy that the pre-election period of 2005 saw a decrease in actual violence and torture,⁸ the levels of intimidation towards citizens were still far too high for the elections to be deemed free and fair.⁹

The Human Rights Forum still exists today as there has been no significant change in the commission of human rights violations by State officials or State sanctioned institutions or individuals.

Download full document

Visit the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum fact sheet

1. See Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, What Happened to the Victims of the Food Riots, 19–23 January 1998? (Harare: The Human Rights NGO Forum, 2006).

2. Civil society led by the National Constitutional Assembly began a constitutional reform process and this caused tension between the sector and government in 1999. The government tried to take over the process by forming a Constitutional Commission that drafted a constitution, which was put to a vote in a Referendum in February 2000 and resulted in the government’s historic defeat.

3. The MDC was formed in 1999 and, amid the violence, reportedly the most violent election period in post-independent Zimbabwe, they went on to win 57 of the 120 contested seats.

4. Solidarity Peace Trust, "Shaping Youths in a Truly Zimbabwean Manner" http://www.kubatana.net/docs/chiyou/youth_militia_030905_pix_sml.pdf. The report covered the period October 2000 to August 2003. Allegations of murder, torture, rape, arson, destruction of property and denial of food aid and health care by the militia have been documented by local and international rights groups. The Amnesty International Report on Zimbabwe in 2003, Zimbabwe: Rights under Siege (AFR 46/012/2003), stated: ‘ZANU-PF youth militia, trained in national youth service camps established throughout the country, were deployed to suburbs and rural areas in the run-up to elections and were implicated in the widespread harassment and torture of the political opposition. The number of reported cases of rape and other forms of sexual torture perpetrated against women suspected of supporting the political opposition increased. This intimidation and political violence created a climate of fear, and of impunity for perpetrators of human rights abuses.’

5. According to an Amani Trust Report, ‘It was clear that more systematic forms of torture were being employed, there was wide spread geographical spread in the various forms of torture, the perpetrators were increasingly members of the youth militia and most of torture was more and more being inflicted at the bases of the youth militia.’ Amani Trust, The Presidential Elections 2002 and the Post-election Period in Zimbabwe (Harare: Amani Trust, 2002).

6. An independent judiciary is essential to achieve stability and the rule of law, but, in Zimbabwe, the judiciary was under extreme State pressure from early 2000. Several senior judges who demonstrated their independence were removed after general intimidation and specific threats. In early 2001, Chief Justice Anthony Gubbay was among those forced to step down, and he was replaced by a well-known ZANU(PF) supporter, Godfrey Chidyausiku.

7. The police began to use more sophisticated forms of torture, including electric shock. Electric wires were placed on the genitals of MDC MP Job Sikhala and prominent human rights lawyer Gabriel Shumba, and electric shocks were administered, among other forms of physical abuse. See Gabriel Shumba’s statement presented to the United States Congress, House Committee on International Relations, Subcommittee on International Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Human Rights, Washington DC, 10 March 2004: http://wwwc.house.gov/international_relations/108/shu031004.htm

8. Torture takes many forms and is perpetrated by the police, the army, the Central Intelligence Organization (CIO), the militia, war veterans and party members. Beatings, falanga, rape, and electric shock are some of the methods being used. However, the problem in Zimbabwe is that ordinary party supporters are also committing abuses and getting away with it. The abuses are taking place amid mass hunger, economic collapse and HIV/AIDS, and there are no official records of political violence. See Redress, Torture in Zimbabwe: Past and Present, June 2005.

9. A number of national and international statements and reports criticized the elections: see the Zimbabwe
Election Support Network, Statistical Pattern Analysis and Hypothesis Testing of the 2005 Parliamentary Elections in Zimbabwe; Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe: Statement on the Media Environment in Zimbabwe Prior to the March 2005 Elections, 30 March 2005; Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, Report on the March 2005 Parliamentary Elections; international groups include Amnesty International, Zimbabwe: An Assessment of Human Rights Violations in the Run Up to the March 2005 Parliamentary Election.

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.

TOP