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Only return to legality will ensure development
Vote Muza, Matters Legal, The Financial Gazette (Zimbabwe)
August 13, 2004

http://www.fingaz.co.zw/fingaz/2004/August/August13/6256.shtml

Vote Muza is a lawyer with Gutu and Chikowero Legal Practitioners
e-mail: gutulaw@mweb.co.zw
website: www.gutulaw.co.zw

While an engine requires oil to run smoothly, a modern state needs an efficient, properly funded and managed legal system because such a legal system is the lubricant that ensures freedom, development and a smooth operation of the state.

The system must be based on sound principles of democracy or constitutionalism, which concepts have universally applicable standards, such that there is no democracy for "Africans" as distinguished from Europeans and other races.

The sterile and backward argument propagated by certain local political analysts that Africans need their own home brewed democracy is misleading, mischievous and backward.

Democracy and constitutionalism are concepts that have evolved over time, manifesting themselves in the various revolutions in Europe, further afield as well as in Africa’s own struggle to obliterate colonialism.

It must be noted that the idea of having a constitution, alone is not the answer to democracy or constitutionalism.

A constitution that is not supported by an honest commitment to basic principles of constitutionalism is a purposeless document.

Only those states that have developed political maturity and acknowledged the sanctity of the rule of law have religiously adhered to provisions of their constitutions.

On the contrary, politically immature individuals among most developing states, including our own have abused their constitutions and the broader legal process in a quest to consolidate their wilting political careers.

Driven by a desire to cling to power for as long as possible even in circumstances of outrageous incompetence and corruption, such individuals have in the name of the constitution practiced atrocious brutalities and unbridled looting and plunder.

To avert criticism they assume ultra defensive radicalism and justify their malpractices in the name of "sovereignty", "state security" and misguided anti-imperialist rhetoric.

And yet sovereignty is a pre-Victorian concept that has since been abandoned in contemporary international politics because states are amalgamating into political and economic blocs.

These political malcontents use the law when it suits them, and disregards it when their interests are threatened.

They see the law as existing to promote and protect them when they practice plutocracy, kleptocracy, and other extreme vices.

In constitutional law circles this class of political maniacs is said to practice "democratic dictatorship". This is because they preach democracy by day while in the dark they indulge in horrible despotism.

The common denominator in authoritarian states is the use of force, which force is supported by torrents of nauseating false propaganda to make the nation docile and conformist.

The ultimate result is the creation of an ultra-rich class of individuals, who are corrupt to the core and give a demagoguery allegiance to the leadership as a way of protecting themselves from scrutiny in view of their corrupt syndicates.

At the height of the corruption, and ensuing pandemonium which pandemonium is contagious, the suffering majority also resorts to anarchy, and looting of whatever they can.

Because the poor become so drenched in destitution they vandalise whatever they can including railway, postal and electrical infrastructure, as their own last measure of corruption.

In the result, railway accidents become the order of the day, random electrical blackouts become acceptable, and telecommunication faults become the norm.

Again at the height of the pandemonium, the deluded politicians, harangued by a plethora of problems demanding attention forget about priorities.

Valuable revenue is spent expanding and renovating youth training centres when the justice ministries suffocate on their way to the intensive care unit.

Underpaid magistrates and prosecutors, fed up with political harassment, overworked and exhausted resign en masse leaving few judicial officers to man the courts.

The clerks and other assistants follow suit leaving most court buildings managed by often inexperienced and confused staff.

In the process, the underpaid, overworked judicial staff join the corruption bandwagon, and it becomes a free for all.

The case backlog for both civil and criminal matters in the Magistrates and High Court balloons to the point of almost emasculating the already burdened courts.

In the result, matters are postponed ad infinitum, until suspects are freed, and litigants lose steam because their claims would have lost value due to hyperinflation.

At the higher courts, judicial officers spend valuable time dispensing "justice" and when they deliver their judgments these are honoured selectively.

Only those judgments deemed favourable to the politicians are rushed to be enforced, at times leaving newspapers effectively banned, and their employees jobless.

On the contrary, judgements not favourable to the esteemed political maniacs are scoffed at as irrelevant and of no force or effect in the process rendering a fatal blow to the honour and integrity of the courts.

Contemptuous acts and utterances that in normal democracies would invite severe sanctions go unpunished.

Some of the venomous slander and libel targeted at the judicial officers emanate from public newspapers and broadcasters, evidencing that the class of contemptuous politicians and their band of apologists are conveniently above the law.

In one typical case, a critical look at the dying Ministry of Justice will reveal that most of the problems emanate from the absence of the Minister.

The absentee spends most of his time in Parliament presenting and debating patently unconstitutional and oppressive laws. A model example of an authoritarian state will not be complete without the common economic mismanagement that culminates in shortage of foreign currency.

Due to the fact that chaos is allergic to legality, and no progress can ensue under anarchy, the pace of development slackens to a near halt and companies fold, some come under curatorship, unemployment skyrockets, and the impoverished citizens take flight to the despised but envied imperialist countries.

Coincidentally, and controversially so, the politicians do a Damascan U-turn and again outstretch their palms begging for the currency of the hated and derided neo-colonial and imperialist countries.

In the end, the only solution will be to pray for a return to legality, accountability and transparency so that progress can flourish for the betterment of the impoverished suffering majority.

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