Back to Index

Your Right to Access Information
Legal Resources Foundation (LRF)
May 20, 2002

The Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act [Chapter 10:27] is now in operation. If you are a citizen of Zimbabwe or lawfully resident in this country, you have a right to examine, and to obtain copies of, certain documents and information kept or controlled by "public bodies".

What are "public bodies"?
The following bodies are public bodies for the purposes of the Act:

• Government departments, agencies and offices;
• Local authorities;
• Parastatals;
• Courts and tribunals;
• Professional bodies established by statute, as well as any of the following professional bodies (which are not established by statute):
  • The Bankers Association of Zimbabwe;
  • The Chartered Institute of Management Accountants;
  • The Institute of Architects of Zimbabwe;
  • The Institute of Bankers in Zimbabwe;
  • The Institute of Directors;
  • The Institute of Personnel Management (Zimbabwe)
• The Commercial Farmers Union (C.F.U.)
• The Zimbabwe Farmers Union (Z.F.U.)
• The Indigenous Commercial Farmers Union (I.C.F.U.)
• The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (Z.C.T.U.)
• The Zimbabwe Federation of Trade Unions
• The Institute of Environmental Studies
• The Institute of Mining Research
• Medical aid societies
• All public companies.

What information can be withheld from you?
You do not have access to all the information kept by public bodies. For example, you are not entitled to the following information:

• Notes kept by judicial officers;
• Parliamentary papers that are protected by parliamentary privilege;
• Records relating to children and young persons kept under the Children’s Act;
• Examination questions;
• Teaching materials and research materials kept by staff of universities and similar institutions;
• Records privately placed in the National Archives or other public archives;
• Records relating to the exercise of the President’s powers or the debates and discussions of Cabinet or its committees (unless the records are more than 25 years old);
• Draft legislation prepared for submission to Cabinet;
• Records relating to local authority meetings from which the public have been excluded;
• Advice or recommendations given to the President, a Minister or a public body (though statistical and similar information on which the advice is based must be disclosed);
• Correspondence or information passed between a legal practitioner and his client;
• Information whose disclosure may prejudice:
  • law enforcement or public safety; or
  • Zimbabwe’s international relations or relations between central government and a local authority (this does not apply to records more than 20 years old); or
  • copyright or patent rights in research material; or
  • the conservation of wildlife or the preservation of monuments or similar sites; or
  • a person’s safety or health;
• Information that is going to be published within 60 days;
• Information whose disclosure:
  • is likely to prejudice a third party by revealing trade secrets or other confidential business information; or
  • will result in an unreasonable invasion of a third party’s personal privacy.
• Any information whose disclosure is not in the public interest.

• a risk of significant harm to public health or safety or to the environment;
• a threat to national security;
• anything that is in the interests of public order;
• anything that may assist in preventing, detecting; or suppressing crime.

How do you obtain information from a public body?
To obtain information from a public body, you must make your request in writing, giving precise details of the information you want so that the public body can locate it. You may also have to pay a fee. The head of the public body concerned must reply to your request within 30 days and, if he refuses your request, must tell you why he is refusing it. Within 30 days after any such refusal, you may ask the Media and Information Commission in writing, to review the refusal and after an inquiry the Commission may order the head of the public body concerned to provide you with the information. The Commission has still to be appointed.

Protection of interests of third parties?
Before disclosing information which may adversely affect a third party or invade a third party’s privacy, the head of a public body must inform that third party and give the third party an opportunity to make representations.

Visit the LRF fact sheet

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