THE Chairman of the Bar Council pleaded last week for a campaign of international pressure to prevent President Robert Mugabe from abusing Zimbabwe’s legal system at next year’s elections.

Stephen Irwin, QC, said that the system of justice in Zimbabwe had been severely compromised. “What is happening here is the destruction of a once fine working justice system and it has every appearance of destruction in order to hold on to political power.”

Irwin was speaking on his return from a three-day visit to the country in an international delegation of Bar leaders. He reported that after the 2000 general election about 36 petitions challenging the validity of the results had been presented to the courts. None had been fully heard. According to Irwin that was because the responsibility for case allocation in the High Court had been removed from the court registrar and given to Paddington Garwe, Judge President of the High Court.

“The courts have been instrumental in preventing the voice of the electorate being heard in relation to the last election,” Irwin said. “Had the job been done right and all petitions heard, if only ten petitions had gone the other way then the Movement for Democratic Change (main opposition party) would have had a majority.”

Irwin also argued that the independence of the judiciary had been undermined by the granting to senior judges of farms under the land resettlement scheme. He emphasised that he was not concerned with the politics of land redistribution. “I am interested only in the law and justice. And I believe that there is time, if the rest of Africa takes up the challenge, for Zimbabwe to have free elections.”

Jon Robins

Explore Law

• Columnists

• Law Panel

• Law Reports

• Student Law

Times Recommends

• The best legal yarns this Christmas
• Legal school 'earned £1m by exploiting bar course'
• Axe may fall on 5,000 more City lawyers