FRIDAY, 5.00PM
ZIMBABWE’S Supreme Court delivered a stunning blow to President Robert Mugabe’s ruling Zanu(PF) party today, by preventing the party from taking an entire state subsidy intended to encourage multi-party democracy.
For the past five years, the Zanu(PF) dominated parliament has voted a sum of Z$225-million (about R94 million) to itself, on the grounds that no other party made the minimum cut off of 15 seats.
A full bench of the country’s highest court ruled today that the Political Parties Act violated voters’ constitutional rights to hear the views of other parties, and that the minimum qualification of 15 seats in parliament was too high, making it virtually impossible for other parties to mount a meaningful challenge to the ruling party in elections. The court noted that while in the 1990 elections, opposition parties took 20% of the vote, in the past two elections they have captured just three seats.
Isaac Manyemba, spokesman for the opposition United Parties, told cheering supporters outside the court on Friday: “We have managed to relieve ZD65 million of the taxpayers’ money from the tentacles of the Zanu(PF) elite … This is a red card, not a yellow card, served on them. The end has begun for Zanu(PF).”
The cut-off of state funding is expected to be a critical blow to the ruling party, which has run up substantial expenses with an extravagant multi-storey party headquarters, and is heavily reliant on state subsidies. Mugabe himself has recently admitted that party support has collapsed, and that donations from party supporters have dried up.