Zimbabwe -- Government by contempt

ZWNews ^ | July 24, 2002 | Michael Hartnack

[Clive]

With only 50 minutes to spare before his notice to quit Zimbabwe expired, journalist Andrew Meldrum last week won a High Court order allowing him to remain at least until the Supreme Court has determined his rights. The question now is whether Robert Mugabe's regime will circumvent or ignore the judge, as has happened so often in the past 22 years. The omens are not promising. An order issued on the same day by Judge Fergus Blackie against Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa underlined the complete contempt with which the executive has treated the judiciary, particularly since state-sponsored self- styled "war veterans" began invading farms and terrorising opponents in February 2000. Blackie noted that Chinamasa had responded with public abuse and threats to every attempt to summon him to court. Chinamasa was charged with contempt after impugning the integrity of the judiciary over the sentencing of three American missionaries on weapons charges. The sentences were light because the three were savagely tortured following their arrest at Harare airport in 1999. Blackie imposed a three-month jail sentence on Chinamasa but noted police had done nothing to enforce a previous warrant of arrest. In response to what may prove no more than a gesture, Blackie received another torrent of abuse from the state media, and a Justice Ministry official took it on himself to announce that Blackie's sentence had "no force and effect."

Yet, despite all this, leaders of Zimbabwe's Commercial Farmers Union last week split their 5,000 members by distancing themselves from "confrontational" resistance to mass eviction by August 9 under the deadline set by the Mugabe's regime. In a statement, CFU president Colin Cloete pleaded for an audience with Mugabe to clarify their plight as famine sweeps over the land. Cloete said elements with "divisive agendas" were at work, adding he believed "goodwill" still existed on Mugabe's side. Cloete refused to answer when asked how he could still talk of goodwill after 11 CFU members have been murdered with state complicity since invasions of farms began in February 2000. The CFU's courageous spokeswoman, Jenni Williams, quit after Cloete's statement. The thanks Cloete got for this supreme act of faith was a sneering speech by Mugabe in Havana, Cuba. Mugabe said "white farmers are not super-human beings" so should talk to Vice President Joseph Msika (whose assurances have counted for nothing in the past two years). "They are not satisfied with that level of authority. They think by virtue of their being British and white they are more divine than anyone else," he jeered.

Meldrum, an American national who is the correspondent for Britain's Guardian newspaper, risked being dragged away by police and immigration officers and spending another night in a stinking, overcrowded, vermin-ridden prison cell - as happened when he was arrested in May under Mugabe's newly passed draconian press bill, the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act. The judge's ruling was a victory, Meldrum noted, no so much for himself but for tens of thousands of others who hold permanent resident status. Since the enforcement this year of stringent new citizenship laws, permanent residents include many people who were born in Zimbabwe, and who had parents and grandparents born here, but were unable to remove suspicion they secretly held another citizenship. "What the court has said is that our rights cannot be taken away by the stroke of a pen," said Meldrum. "The Supreme Court will make the final judgment." It is expected to be several months before Meldrum's case is heard by Chief Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku, a former government minister and Mugabe supporter hastily appointed after his predecessor, Anthony Gubbay, was forced by death threats to take early retirement.

Early last week, Magistrate Godfrey Macheyo had acquitted Meldrum in the first trial held under the new press law. Meldrum faced a possible two- year jail term for "abuse of journalistic privilege by publishing a false report." There were audible sighs of relief from reputable journalists when Macheyo held that Meldrum did everything reasonable to check a report he had received of an opposition supporter being murdered by state militia, and the police had failed to cooperate. As we were congratulating Meldrum, immigration officers served him with an order signed 12 days earlier by Home Affairs Minister John Nkomo, revoking his permanent residence status and giving him 24 hours to leave. Meldrum, who has lived in Zimbabwe since 1981, hurriedly sought an interdict against expulsion, and the right to appeal to the Supreme Court. And now he waits. "So far no one has come to slap me with a new order," he said nervously.

The treatment of Meldrum, of Blackie, of Cloete, was stunningly reminiscent of that recently described to me by a South African academic, Professor Michael Whisson who in 1976 he wrote to the then Justice Minister, Jimmy Kruger, to plead for a colleague given a banning order. "To my surprise, I received a reply," recalled Wisson: "'In response to your arrogant and impertinent letter, I wish to advise you that I am under no obligation to explain my actions to anybody.'" Thus was South Africa in a mess before the De Klerk-Mandela Era, and thus is Zimbabwe in a mess now. Famines don't happen where those in power have to account for their actions.

[Clive]

-

[Brian Allen]

<< ..... "white farmers ..... think by virtue of their being British and white they are more divine than anyone else," Mugabe jeered ...... >>

And by so doing exposed the pathetic nature of the Psychopathological Projection Syndrome from which he and every other of Africa's and the rest of the world's morbid racists suffer -- and which is at the root of the envy-motivated and hatred and rage-engined hesporophobic self hatred with which he and they impugn the products of Judeo-Christian/Western Civilization. Of whose undeniable and invincible superiority they -- and reality -- have convinced themselves!