adminRosenthal Mutakati Ghetto Blast
I USED to admire people working at the courts of law, but not anymore. It’s now water under the bridge.
What with revelations that these men and women go through hell on an average day’s work?
They leave the comfort of their homes every morning to earn a decent living through the discharge of their professional callings, but the sweetness of it all ends there.
Life at the courts of law is not all rosy.
A court, also called court of law, is a person or body of persons having judicial authority to hear and resolve disputes in civil, criminal, ecclesiastical, or military cases. The word court, which originally meant simply an enclosed place, also denotes the chamber, hall, building, or other place where judicial proceedings are held. The primary function of any court system, to help keep domestic peace, is so obvious that it is rarely considered or mentioned.
If there was no institution that was accepted by the citizens of a society as an impartial and authoritative judge of whether a person had committed a crime and, if so, what type of punishment should be meted out, vigilantes offended by the person’s conduct might well take the law into their own hands and proceed to punish the alleged miscreant according to their uncontrolled discretion.
If no agency were empowered to decide private disputes impartially and authoritatively, people would have to settle their disputes by themselves, with power rather than legitimate authority likely being the basis of such decisions. Such a system might easily degenerate into anarchy. Not even a primitive society could survive under such conditions. Thus, in this most basic sense, courts constitute an essential element of society’s machinery for keeping peace.
Gentle reader, you ain’t seen nothing if you haven’t visited the court. A lot of bribery, juju and back-biting takes place at these halls where justice is delivered.
Popularly known as “Kudare”, “Kuvatongi,” “Kumagweta,” or simply “Kwamambo” the courts of justice are full of life and drama because they form an integral part in the governance of the country by ensuring criminals are removed from well-meaning citizens and exiled to correctional facilities dotted throughout the country with the level of crime one committed prescribing the length of their seclusion from society.
Nobody wants to go to jail or experience life there because of tales told by people who have been there and what society sees from the been-tos.
This results in people trying to cut corners and literally “paying” to continue enjoying life outside prison even in cases where they themselves will be convinced that they committed a crime for which they should be punished. Being public places, the courts are frequented by so many people on an average day provided they are properly dressed. But some of these people are not good at all. They visit these places with all sorts of muti while having applied stinking ointments to hoodwink the magistrates and other court staff.
As I commit pen to paper gentle reader, a visit to any courtroom will show pebbles on the floor prescribed by traditional healers as a way to hoodwink court officials and get favourable judgments for their clients.
Claypots with an assortment of charms can be seen in the courtyards while people who work at these places are sometimes paid by n’angas to sprinkle muti on the magistrates’ chairs so that they become inattentive and give unbalanced judgments in favour of their clients.
I feel sorry for people who do cleaning duties at the courts of law because day in day out they handle despicable material brought by people of various shapes and sizes seeking different outcomes from the courts.
If you work for the courts, half the time you are approached by desperate people seeking to bribe you so that their thieving son is not committed to prison.
Some of these people sometimes give you sugared pills to swallow. Women in acrimonious relationships with their former husbands offer court officials cash and wifely favours including sex just to fix the men they no longer see eye-to-eye with.
This also exposes the unlucky court official who falls for the trap to ailments, including HIV/Aids.
Countless court officials have in the recent past lost their jobs because of people who funnel information about them in wrong ears resulting in them being forced to justify why they cannot be fired for behaving in such an unprofessional manner.
If you work for the court of law, you are not a free person. Each time people meet you at the bar they want to assualt you for sending their breadwinner to jail even when they know that the particular individual lived a life of crime. Some will buy you copious amounts of beer in the hope that they will not be sent to jail should they commit a crime in future.
Relatives and even siblings can be a real nuisance.
Guys with brothers and sisters who work for the courts of law lead rough lives. They go about beating up people and committing petty crimes because they know they will be bailed out. In their wisdom or lack of it, these people even brag: “Nyangwe ndikakubeta blazo hapana chinondiwira. Mukoma wangu ndiye chamakwengwerengwe kudare anondiregerera apaiwe unenge usisina chekutsengesa zino ndaribvisa,” you hear these loose canons saying in bars. Gentle reader, some people working at the courts of law have unsteady love lives.
Each time they fall in love, they are not sure whether the other party will be serious or will be after benefits that come with it.
Most guys working for the courts have women throwing themselves on their feet, making it difficult for them to assess whether or not these people will be serious. N’angas sometimes befriend people working at the courts before going about telling people that they have powers to make court documents disapper. “Chiremba akabva kuChipinge anoita kuti nyaya idzimwe mudare,” you see these posters pasted on some street corners in the ghetto.
If working for the court is the only job left in the world, please count me out.
Inotambika mughetto.
Online Reporter