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Crisis in the judiciary - Excerpt from Weekly update 2003-24
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe
June 16 - June 22, 2003

As the country’s political and economic crises continued to worsen, it emerged, albeit through piecemeal media reports, that the judiciary was facing serious problems. For example, The Daily News (17/06) reported that five out of the seven Harare regional magistrates had resigned over poor salaries. The Chronicle (18/6) also revealed that lawyers had also left their profession for better paying jobs outside Zimbabwe, leaving the country with "only 600 practising instead of the more than 1,000 required at any given time". The report quoted one lawyer saying the exodus of lawyers had led to a backlog of cases at the magistrates’ courts. Indeed, The Zimbabwe Independent (20/06) quoted Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) deploring the courts’ delays in handing down judgments on cases, arguing that this was a violation of the country’s constitution and international conventions. ZLHR cited delays in the ruling on Tsvangirai’s bail application as an example.

In fact, there have also been delays in hearing the 2000 parliamentary election petitions and the MDC’s challenge to the 2002 election results, which the MDC’s legal secretary, David Coltart, attributed to the court records that were missing from the High Court (The Daily News on Sunday, 22/06). Coltart pointed out that because of the delays, some ZANU PF MPs whose victories were nullified by the courts continue to sit "illegally" in Parliament. However, this was hotly disputed by The Herald (17/6) and ZBC (ZTV & 3FM, 18/06, 6am). They noted that ZANU PF legislators "can continue sitting in Parliament despite the nullification of their victories by the High Court until the Supreme Court has heard their appeals". The Herald noted that dates for hearing the appeals had not been set because the "Supreme Court is currently inundated with a backlog of matters dating back to at least four years". However, the paper failed to fully explain the actual causes of such a backlog. The Zimbabwe Independent comment ‘Judge not, that ye be not judged’ bemoaned the crisis within the judiciary, which the paper observed had failed to protect the rights of citizens.

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