Mick Hartley

Mbeki's power-sharing agreement is in tatters. In advance of a summit tomorrow of the Southern African Development Community, Human Rights Watch have issued a new report, urging South African leaders to get tough:

The 47-page report, "'Our Hands Are Tied': Erosion of the Rule of Law in Zimbabwe," documents how ZANU-PF has compromised the independence and impartiality of judges, magistrates and prosecutors and transformed the police into an openly partisan and unaccountable arm of ZANU-PF. The report also documents how police routinely and arbitrarily arrest and detain MDC activists, using harassment and detention without charge as a form of persecution. The Southern African Development Community (SADC) will hold its summit meeting on November 9 to discuss the situation in Zimbabwe.  
 
“ZANU-PF’s institutions of repression remain intact, and there has been no change in their abusive conduct and attitude,” said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “The regional leaders in SADC need to get tough on the party leader, Robert Mugabe, or ask the United Nations to intervene.”  

Human Rights Watch researchers conducted more than 80 interviews in August 2008 with victims of political violence, lawyers, academics, serving and retired magistrates, and police officers in six provinces of Zimbabwe. It found that after the first round of general elections on March 29, senior police officers issued specific instructions to police officers across Zimbabwe not to investigate or arrest ZANU-PF supporters and their allies implicated in political violence. Almost all senior police officers in Zimbabwe openly support ZANU-PF, in breach of their duty to remain politically neutral.  
 
Human Rights Watch found that, although there have been at least 163 politically motivated extrajudicial killings since the March elections, the police have only made two arrests, neither of which led to prosecutions. Almost all the victims have been MDC supporters.  
 
The report also highlights the fact that ZANU-PF militia and supporters continue to suffer no penalty for abuses carried out in the aftermath of the recent elections. Members of the ZANU-PF militia who have been accused of killing six people in Chaona on May 5 continue to walk free. ZANU-PF supporters who have been accused of killing an MDC councilor, Gibbs Chironga, and three others in Chiweshe on June 20 have not been investigated. The killing of Joshua Bakacheza, an MDC driver, on June 24 has not resulted in any arrests. The police also refuse to investigate the abduction and beating by ZANU-PF youth of thousands of MDC supporters.  
 
This lack of accountability for mistreatment in Zimbabwe remains entrenched despite the signing of the power-sharing agreement on September 15…..