OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Monday
A LEADING South African lawyer says Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe failed to reassure an international jurists’ panel in a meeting last week of his commitment to the law.
Advocate George Bizos, former President Nelson Mandela’s lawyer and a regular adviser to the South African government, said Mugabe refused to accept that Zimbabwe’s courts could rule on the legality of his land-grab programme.
Mugabe has ignored several court rulings that the seizure of white-owned farms without compensation is illegal and the government should act against the invasion of more than 1_000 farms by self-styled veterans of the liberation war in the former Rhodesia.
“He assured us that he is a believer in the rule of law and an independent judiciary – with an unfortunate rider. He said orders of court relating to land invasions were not matters of court, but matters for a political solution,” Bizos said in a radio interview.
“That is not an acceptable response … Democrats throughout the world are not prepared to accept that qualification.”
He said an International Bar Association delegation, including British, US and South African lawyers, met Mugabe, Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa and about 100 others in a visit that ended on Friday.
They inquired into reports of harassment of judges and the media in Zimbabwe, where Mugabe, 77 and in power since 1980, is preparing to fight for a further six-year term in presidential elections due by April next year.
“We had a lengthy meeting with the Minister of Justice. He really spoke along the same lines as the president. But I believe, with due respect to him, that he does not distinguish between the rule of law and rule by law.
“We had a lot of difficulty touching base with him during our discussion,” Bizos said.
A delegation of Zimbabwean trade and finance ministers is in South Africa this week for talks with the government on measures to help Zimbabwe reverse a deepening recession.
Meanwhile, Roman Catholic leaders in Zimbabwe have denounced the government’s violence-wracked land reform scheme as a “political power game” and backed the stand by judiciary’s against the government. – Reuters
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