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The leaked record reveals the double standards, of human rights lawyers strategising to “consolidate the democratic space” yet plotting to use litigation to “flood the courts . . . so that courts are unable to resolve (election) cases within deadline.”
It was strategy to place the Judiciary, a critical pillar to any democracy, under siege.
The meeting agreed that MDC-T would “identify the litigants” to be used in laying siege to the courts.
They viewed it as an “opportunity to demonstrate that Zimbabweans have no confidence in the justice system”.
The chair of that meeting called for MDC-T to give its position on the recent Constitutional Court judgment that Zimbabwe’s elections be held by July 31 2013.
It was a position asserted by high-ranking MDC-T members who accounted for five, among the 15 members present at that meeting.
Why then, in its statement titled “We Plead Lawyer-Client confidentiality”, The Herald June 14 2013, did ZLHR threaten the criminal prosecution of a journalist, Caesar Zvayi, for publishing articles concluding that ZLHR’s “Strategic Election Litigation” meeting was between “MDC-T and its allies in the NGO sector”?
Zvayi’s articles were founded on the truth he read within ZLHR’s own leaked minutes that reveal an affair with MDC-T’s cause.
It was after all a “Strategic Election Litigation” meeting which came to agree that “the MDC will identify the litigants” while ZLHR committed to funding arising legal fees.
Yet ZLHR would have us believe Zvayi to be a “propagandist” whom in writing on the strategic meeting had failed to adhere to basic “journalistic standards and ethics”.
Was Zvayi’s opinion not founded upon leaked minutes written by ZLHR’s own hand and “adopted as a true and accurate record?”
What more did the journalist need to clarify really; a bare denial?
An organisation whose aims and objectives include upholding “the free flow of information” now condemns as “dangerous” Zvayi’s journalistic expression on a “true and accurate record” drawn by ZLHR’s own hand.
ZLHR declares such expression to be a “crime” and threatens to lodge a “criminal complaint”.
It wants Zvayi silenced.
If not, to face “prosecution by law enforcement officers” for intimidating and harassing the legal profession.
But we must ask; who is really being intimidated and harassed here?
Is it the journalist personally placed under Western economic sanctions at the behest of human rights NGOs; or an NGO well-funded by the same West and with most learned lawyers at its disposal?
It is ironic that ZLHR declares Zvayi’s articles as an “attack against the legal profession in Zimbabwe” and to be in conflict with “a new constitutional era that obliges institutions and individuals to promote national unity, peace and stability.”
Yet this same human rights organisation hosted a meeting whose objective was to “flood the courts” and cause Zimbabweans to lose “confidence in the justice system”
What happened to ZLHR’s commitment to upholding “the unimpeded administration of justice”?
The human rights organisation now plays host to a meeting strategising to lay siege to a new Constitutional Court, in which meeting the court is condemned as a “compromised bench” whose calibre of judges is “a cause for concern.”
ZLHR argues in its right of reply statement that lawyers are “a vital bridge between the people, the law and the courts” but sees no problem in hosting a meeting whose objective is to strategise how best it can fund lawyers to pursue litigation that causes Zimbabweans to lose confidence in flooded courts.
However, much the new Constitutional Court may endeavour to find its way and ensure efficiency it is to find itself facing a strategised cocktail of litigation directed at flooding its bridge between the people and the exercise of their democratic rights, in this case the right to vote.
ZLHR condemns Zvayi’s articles for breaching “Lawyer-Client confidentiality” and the right of all Zimbabweans “to consult with lawyers of their choice”.
This is far from being the truth.
Firstly, it can only be one of its own who leaked the minutes that must be guilty of breaching lawyer-client confidentiality.
Secondly, close reading of the leaked minutes reveals no consultation that took place as between clients and their lawyers.
The record will show that the MDC-T contingent that attended there was not viewed as “clients”.
In fact, the meeting gave them a critical role to play as partners in the litigation strategy when it “agreed that MDC will identify the litigants”.
One lawyer at that meeting expressed the need to identify “an appropriate litigant”.
Another impressed upon the “need to get a litigant who will allege that rights have been violated.”
Yet another lawyer stressed the need to “finding a litigant who is an alien and has 30 days to register”.
Why would 10 lawyers see the need to identify clients if the MDC-T representatives sitting at the table had attended for client-lawyer consultation?
Allegations that Zvayi’s articles on the meeting undermine Lawyer-Client privilege are thus baseless.
He wrote articles about a meeting by client-less lawyers deliberating on finding and identifying suitable clients.
What “chilling effect” then, as alleged by ZLHR, do the articles have “on other potential litigants who will fear to consult lawyers in the future?”
Was it not ZLHR’s giving of the prerogative of identifying election litigants to the MDC-T that will most likely scare away clients who despite being desperate for pro-bono legal services offered by ZLHR may fear association with an MDC-T made partner to the human rights NGO’s litigation strategy?
Their election litigation strategy seems founded on the belief that the only Zimbabweans that may require litigation against any election violence, or to ensure their right to register as voters, will be those from the MDC-T party alone.
The litigation strategy thus anticipates only MDC-T victims, to be identified by MDC-T.
Are we made to believe the perpetrators will naturally come from Zanu-PF then?
Given the potentially far reaching consequences, Zvayi’s articles become relevant.
They are in the public interest, a public preparing to participate in free and fair elections.
They inform and alert otherwise ill-advised Zimbabweans of the purpose for which they are to be identified and recruited as litigants in the strategised election litigation.
And indeed it is litigation tainted by the presiding hand of partisan politics, of an interested party contesting the elections.
Will MDC-T identify as a litigant to receive ZLHR’s pro-bono legal services a Zanu-PF victim of violence that might be perpetrated in Tendai Biti or Douglas Mwonzora’s contested constituencies?
Will Alex Magaisa or Rose Zigomo, who sit in the Prime Minister’s office, direct that the ZLHR funds be availed to challenge any conduct by their party leader’s supporters where such conduct may amount to electoral malpractices during the presidential election campaign.
We have not seen any precedent have we, where the MDC-T has identified a litigant to challenge Western sanctions that have clearly influenced affected Zimbabweans’ ability to freely express their political will?
Have we seen ZLHR use its vast funds to lobby and advocate the human rights now being promoted by a succeeding land reform, or those rights to be guaranteed by indigenisation?
And here lies the double standards that must have the Zimbabwean public begin to question civil society organisations that have claimed to promote and protect human rights, good governance and democracy in their name.
When journalists like Zvayi, and others, bring before the court of public opinion such compromised civil society conduct must they be vilified as propagandists, intimidated, harassed and even sanctioned for allegedly collaborating with Zanu-PF, the maliciously declared perpetrators of all things evil in Zimbabwe?
Who must bring to account then, those NGOs that are funded in our name, claiming to fight for our rights and our democracy?
The reality is that they are not elected by the very majority on whose behalf they claim to litigate in the name of human rights, good governance and democracy.
And so when political prejudice causes them to undermine such high principles must they then declare journalists who report on such hypocrisy to be dangerous criminals deserving of arrest, prosecution and imprisonment; failing which sanctions can always be imposed against them by western allies.
According to ZLHR’s statement, Zvayi should have seen no evil, heard not of it and let alone spoken of it to the masses.
Yet to the contrary, for the sake of our new constitutional era and guarantee of human rights and a democracy that is truly Zimbabwean, let such “dangerous” men arise and ensure civil society organisations are kept accountable to those they claim to represent.
Rangu Nyamurundira is a lawyer and indigenisation/empowerment consultant based in Harare
Online Reporter