A Zimbabwean High Court judge, Justice Moses Chinhengo, has resigned without giving reasons, becoming the second judge to leave the bench in a month, the state-owned Herald said on Friday.
”Regrettably for reasons entirely personal I have had to tender my resignation,” Chinhengo was quoted by the Herald as writing in his resignation letter to President Robert Mugabe.
”I hope that in future I will be able to serve Zimbabwe in another capacity as the call of duty may demand,” he said.
Appointed to the bench by Mugabe in 1996, Chinhengo is expected to leave his post at the end of the month.
Last month, judge Michael Majuru at the administrative court quit the judiciary for medical reasons and faxed his resignation from South Africa.
Majuru had recused himself from a case last year because he allegedly pre-empted a ruling in favour of the independent paper, The Daily News.
He had last November presided over one of the numerous cases involving the independent Daily News, a fierce critic of Mugabe’s government, which has appealed several times against government orders that it be shut down.
At least eight judges from the High Court and Supreme Court have left the country’s judiciary benches since 2001.
The former most senior judge, Supreme Court chief justice Anthony Gubbay was forced to retire in March 2001 after he handed down verdicts opposed to forcible seizures of white-owned land for redistribution to blacks under agrarian reforms, which were accelerated by Mugabe. – Sapa-AFP