Prominent Zimbabwean human rights lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa was arrested for allegedly obstructing the course of justice. She is pictured here exiting a police vehicle as she arrived at the Harare Magistrate’s Court on Mar. 20. Credit: Nyarai Mudimu/IPS

By Nyarai Mudimu
HARARE, Mar 21 2013 (IPS)

Heightened political tension between the major rivals in Zimbabwe’s coalition government and increased clampdowns on civil society have left questions about the country’s readiness for a true democracy just days after people voted to adopt a new constitution.

Just over three million Zimbabweans voted on Sunday Mar. 17 in support of the draft constitution, which paves the way for elections later this year, while 179,489 rejected it. There were 56,627 spoilt ballots.

However, on the day after the referendum, prominent local human rights lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa was arrested for allegedly obstructing the course of justice. She is said to have requested that police show her a search warrant when they raided Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s support staff offices on Sunday Mar. 17. Four staffers were also arrested.

“The government clampdown on individuals and organisations that support democracy… clearly demonstrate that there are forces that are not yet ready to welcome the democratic dispensation that will come with the new constitution,” Nixon Nyikadzino, a human rights activist with the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, a grouping of more than 350 civil organisations in Zimbabwe working together to bring about democratic change, told IPS.

President Robert Mugabe’s ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF), and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change led by Tsvangirai (MDC-T), entered a Global Political Agreement (GPA) for a power-sharing government in 2008 after political violence marred the election. Mugabe has been in power for the last 33 years and his time in office have been plagued by allegations of corruption, abuse of power, political intimidation and human rights abuses.

The draft constitution that Zimbabweans just voted for limits the president to only two five-year terms of office, but it also has clear provisions that require security forces to be politically neutral and not to interfere with electoral processes.

Mtetwa and her co-accused are facing charges of impersonating the police, possessing articles for criminal use, breaching the Official Secrets Act and obstructing the course of justice. The act is vague and says that any matter that the state may allege to be “prejudicial to the safety and interests of Zimbabwe” breaches it, but it does not define what “interests” mean.

They are also accused of unlawfully compiling dockets about government officials, including members of Zanu-PF, who are thought to be corrupt.

On Wednesday Mar. 20, Mtetwa and her co-accused were denied bail in the Harare Magistrate’s Court. This is despite a Mar. 18 Zimbabwe High Court ruling that ordered police to release Mtetwa. Police defied the order and she was held in custody and appeared this week in the magistrate’s court.

The move has been condemned by activists here.

“We do not know how a junior court has nullified a senior court’s order. The High Court ordered that she be released but police defied that. Now a junior court has just defied the order again. How the court arrived at that decision is still a surprise to us. We are still studying the decision,” the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights spokesman Kumbirai Mafunda told IPS.

Nyikadzino said he was not surprised by the court’s decision to deny bail to the five.

“That is their style: to keep you under their custody for as long as they can, because they know they don’t have a case. I know of cases where the police have had to resort to evoking section 121 of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act, which allows them to hold suspects for longer periods before they appear in court,” he said. In January  international rights organisation Human Rights Watch said the justice system still remained “extremely partisan” towards Zanu-PF.

Nyikadzino added that the tension between Zanu-PF and MDC-T suggested that the coalition government was not ready to embrace democracy.

However, police have insisted that the arrests are legitimate. National police spokesperson assistant commissioner Charity Charamba told IPS that Mtetwa’s co-accused were not staffers in the prime minister’s office.

“These four people are not civil servants. You have to be a civil servant to be deemed a staffer in the prime minister’s office. The people work for a non-governmental organisation, the Institute of Democratic Alliance in Zimbabwe. They had no right to pretend to work in the PM’s office,” she said.

But HRW criticised the government in a Mar. 19 statement, and listed a number of “politically motivated abuses against civil society activists and organisations.”

Zanu-PF spokesman Rugare Gumbo scoffed at and dismissed the accusations of a clampdown on civil society.

“We know this sensationalism is a ploy by (Prime Minister) Tsvangirai and his handlers to push for a SADC (Southern African Development Community) summit before we hold our general elections. Let the police and the courts do their work. We have become more aware of their (MDC-T) machinations,” Gumbo told IPS.

Tsvangirai warned his supporters to expect more violence from Zanu-PF.

“History has recorded that when change is about to happen, there are certain elements who are bent on diverting it. In 2000 we rejected the draft constitution, and a few weeks later, there were land invasions and widespread violence. In 2008 when we signed the GPA how many people were arrested?” he said at a press conference in Harare on Tuesday Mar. 19.

Meanwhile, Mugabe, who is currently in Rome for Pope Francis’ inauguration, is reported to have said that the draft constitution will now be gazetted for 30 days and then tabled in parliament for debate. It will not be amended.

Five million registered voters in Zimbabawe have an opportunity to change the lives of this country’s women. Women represent the majority, some 53 percent of the Zimbabwe's 12.6 million people. Credit: Trevor Davies/IPS

By Nyarai Mudimu
MOUNT DARWIN, Zimbabwe, Mar 15 2013 (IPS)

“Ten reasons why women must vote ‘Yes’ for the draft constitution…” says the Constitution Select Committee’s campaign radio jingle that plays over the airwaves in a grocer’s store at Mukumbura border post business centre on Zimbabwe’s northeastern border with Mozambique.

Zimbabwe is holding a referendum on Mar. 16 to decide on whether to adopt the draft constitution that has taken almost four years to draft and gobbled 50 million dollars of donor funds from the impoverished country’s economy.

The Constitution Select Committee (Copac) is the constitutional parliamentary committee tasked with writing the draft constitution, and ahead of the referendum has been tasked with informing Zimbabweans about the draft and encouraging them to vote.

But the radio jingle is almost drowned by noise from a neighbouring beer hall’s jukebox.

Ironically the jingle’s message is seemingly aimed at women at the border post business centre, but they appear to be busy going about their daily chores – vending fruits and vegetables, almost indifferent to a process that local politicians have described as a game changer in this southern African nation’s political history.

A disinterested Maria Nyamasoka, 48, tells IPS that she does not care about the draft constitution.

“Nothing will change for me. Maybe for you people from Harare it will. Maybe that’s why you have travelled all this way to come down here to talk about this draft. In the last election my homestead was burnt and I narrowly missed rape from some party youths. I really do not want to talk about this…I don’t want to have anything to do with politics,” she says.

Despite attempts by Copac and political parties to push supporters for a “Yes” vote this weekend, some say they are unaware of the referendum or the draft constitution that they have been asked to vote on. Sithembile Mpofu, a Bulawayo housewife, is one of them.

“Maybe it is because I do not watch ZTV,” Mpofu tells IPS, referring to the national television station where programming has, in recent weeks, been dominated by campaigns asking registered voters to tick “Yes” on the referendum ballots.

“I cannot go and vote for something I do not know, even if I vote ‘No’ I will be dishonest,” she says.

But despite the lack of interest by some, five million registered voters here have an opportunity to change the lives of this country’s women. Women represent the majority, some 53 percent of the country’s 12.6 million people. The Women’s Coalition, a grouping of women’s rights NGO, has been campaigning for the acceptance of the draft constitution.

“Women have fought hard to get almost 75 percent of our demands adopted in the draft. Definitely life for women will never be the same again under this new constitution, if it’s adopted,” says Slyvia Chirawu, a national coordinator at the Women and Law in Southern Africa, and a member of the Women’s Coalition.

Chirawu says that women suffered particularly from Section 23 of the current constitution, which denies them equal rights as men with regards to custody and guardianship of their minor children.

“Under Section 23, a woman could not apply for a passport for her child without the consent of the father…(a woman) could not get her child’s birth certificate in the absence of the father of the child. But men could do all these things in the absence of the mother of the child,” says Chirawu. In the draft constitution women are now able to apply both for passports and birth certificates for their children without the consent of their child’s father.

Justice and Parliamentary Affairs Deputy Minister Jessie Majome, a member of Copac, tells IPS that according to the current constitution girls can marry at 16, while boys can legally do the same at 18.

“What this meant is girls had to drop out of school to be married off, while boys continued with their education. The boys had to wait to reach the legal age of majority, creating an unfair advantage against women. But according to this new draft, both boys and girls will be allowed to marry when they reach the legal age of majority,” says Majome.

The draft constitution will also ensure women relief from some harmful cultural practices that have been considered permissible.

Under-age girls have been married off to older men, while widows have been forced to become the “wives” of their late husbands’ male relatives.

“Although the (current) constitution had been amended recently to forbid some harmful cultural practices, this draft actually forbids and makes it unconstitutional for customary law to take precedence over common law. Women had been disadvantaged when it comes to inheritance, as they could not inherit family property. Widows also lost their property upon the deaths of their spouses,” says Majome.

Jane Chiriga, a gender researcher, says the draft is “a triumph for women.”

“There is a deliberate effort to address the flaws and gaps of the current constitution. What remains, I think, is to align this with the country’s laws,” Chiriga says.

In the past, the participation of women in politics has largely been left to the discretion of political parties to create quotas for women. But the draft constitution proposes to set aside 60 seats for women in the 210-seat parliament. In addition, women will constitute at least half the membership of all commissions and other elective and appointed governmental bodies.

“What takes the cake for me is the half membership for women in all commissions and other elective or appointed governmental bodies,” says Chirawu.

A legislator from the Movement for Democratic Change led by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai (MDC-T), Tabitha Khumalo, says “it is a big step for women to be given prominence in the supreme law.”

“(In the past), women’s issues in this country have been addressed in token terms as if to appease us. But we have rights as equal citizens and this draft, if read with other laws, is something that will change both our public and private lives,” she tells IPS.

Constitutional law expert Alex Magaisa also believes that the draft could help stop the “politicisation of the security forces,” who have not hidden their support for President Robert Mugabe and in the process aimed their baton sticks at men and women alike.

The current constitution is silent about the key issue of political neutrality of institutions such as the army, police, and civil service.

“The draft has clear and extensive provisions that require these bodies (security forces) to be politically neutral and not to interfere with electoral processes,” he tells IPS.

*Additional reporting by Ignatius Banda in Bulawayo.