Zimbabwe’s Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that a respected pro-democracy figure and critic of President Robert Mugabe’s rule had no right to a passport from the country of her birth because her father was a citizen of New Zealand.
The ruling by chief justice Godfrey Chidyausiku, a supporter of Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF party, and two other pro-government judges, gave Judith Todd, the daughter of former liberal Rhodesian prime minister, the late Sir Garfield Todd (48) hours in which to return to Zimbabwe and renounce her alleged New Zealand with the appropriate Zimbabwean officials.
However, New Zealand officials said the court’s presumption that Todd automatically took her father’s citizenship was wrong. ”She doesn’t have New Zealand citizenship,” said a representative for that country’s high commission in South Africa.
Todd has no further course of appeal. Todd was ending a holiday in Britain at the time the controversial ruling was made. If she fails to meet the deadline, her rights to Zimbabwean citizenship will be cancelled. She will have theoretical rights to live in Zimbabwe as a foreign resident, and could apply for New Zealand citizenship, lawyers said. There is also a possibility Todd will become stateless. She will not be allowed to vote in Zimbabwe. However, she still has a chance to clear the bureaucratic obstacle course in time.
Todd’s lawyer, Bryant Elliot, said she was booked on a flight leaving Heathrow airport in London on Thursday for Harare. ”Her return ticket to Zimbabwe was booked when she left in December,” he said. ”It’s a remarkable coincidence” that the court deadline falls due at the same time as she is due to return.
Chidyausiku’s judgement offered no explanation why Todd should have only 48 hours. A former missionary, Sir Garfield was ousted from his position as prime minister by right-wing Rhodesian colleagues in 1958. Judy was a fiery critic of the white minority Rhodesian government, and won the respect of black nationalists —
including Mugabe — who were fighting for black majority rule.
Both Todds supported Mugabe at the country’s independence in 1980, but soon became outspoken critics of his government’s human rights abuses. Sir Garfield was banned from voting in presidential elections last year under hastily-drafted citizenship legislation that stripped most of the country’s 50 000 whites — a group likely to have voted against Mugabe — of their Zimbabwean citizenship and
therefore their right to vote.
Shortly after, Judith was refused a Zimbabwe passport because of the same law. It outlawed dual citizenship and declared that anyone with foreign ancestors had the right to the citizenship of their ancestors and would have to renounce it in order to retain Zimbabwean citizenship, whether or not they were born here.
Todd took her case to the high court, arguing that she had never possessed New Zealand citizenship and did not need to renounce it. The high court endorsed her argument and ordered registrar-general Tobaiwa Mudede to issue her with a new passport.
Mudede refused, and appealed instead. The ruling was seen as a test case not only for whites of foreign descent, but also for over a million descendants of migrant farm workers from neighbouring Zambia, Mozambique and Malawi who were equally affected by the law.
However, in his judgement passed down today, judge Chidyausiku said that Sir Garfield’s New Zealand citizenship was automatically conferred on his daughter.
”She did not have to take any steps to claim it,” he said.
Wrong, said a representative for the New Zealand high commission in Pretoria. ”She is entitled to New Zealand citizenship, but she has never taken it up. She cannot renounce something she is entitled to but which she has not taken up.”
Lawyers expressed surprise at the speed with which the supreme court -which international legal organisations say Mugabe has ”packed” with his supporters to ensure favourable verdicts — ruled on Mudede’s appeal.
It took one month to make up its mind after hearing argument. By contrast, there are about a dozen appeals against election wins by Mugabe’s party in the 2000 election that Chidyausiku has not bothered to set down for argument, 18 months after the first ruling was given. – Sapa-DPA