Zim govt has issues in new case before SADC Tribunal

TORTURE and assault victims, whose claims for compensation against the Zimbabwean government have become worthless because of runaway inflation over the years, ran into procedural hurdles when they tried to get the SADC Tribunal to intervene in their favour yesterday.

In the latest case to be heard by the SADC Tribunal in Windhoek, the Zimbabwean government is again being sued in the Southern African Development Community’s regional court.A human rights coalition, the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, is suing the government of Zimbabwe before the Tribunal on behalf of 12 people who obtained judgements for compensation against the Zimbabwean authorities as a result of torture and violence that the Zimbabwe Republic Police and the Zimbabwe National Army inflicted on them.In judgements that Zimbabwe’s High Court delivered in favour of the 12, the Zimbabwean government was ordered to pay them compensation ranging between 4 850 Zimbabwe dollars and 10 million Zimbabwe dollars for damages suffered as a result of the assaults and torture.The government has paid out only one of the claims – but even in that case, it is now claimed, the payment took so long to be made that the devaluation of Zimbabwe’s currency meant that the money that was eventually paid out ended up being worth a fraction of what it should have been.Other judgements for the payment of damages that were granted against the Zimbabwean government have not been paid at all. The oldest of the judgements dates back to December 1999.The Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum is asking the SADC Tribunal to declare that Zimbabwe has breached the SADC Treaty by failing to comply with the orders given by the High Court of Zimbabwe.It is also asking the Tribunal to order the government to meet lawyers representing the Forum under the supervision of the President of the Zimbabwe Law Society or another independent monitoring agency to negotiate a mutually satisfactory adjustment of the damages awards given by the Zimbabwe High Court.The Forum is further asking the Tribunal to declare that a section of Zimbabwe’s State Liability Act, which protects Zimbabwean state property from being attached or used to pay judgement debts, is also in breach of the SADC Treaty.Because of preliminary procedural objections raised by the Zimbabwean government, none of these issues were argued before the Tribunal’s President, Mauritian Judge Ariranga Pillay, and Judges Luis Mondlane (Mozambique), Isaac Mtambo (Malawi), Onkemetse Tshosa (Botswana) and Rigoberto Kambovo (Angola) yesterday, though.One of these objections came in an argument from Nelson Mutsonziwa, representing the government, that the Tribunal cannot hear a case in which an organisation – the Forum in this case – is representing people who had been the actual parties involved in the original cases before the Zimbabwean courts. The people who had originally sued the government of Zimbabwe are not before the Tribunal, Mutsonziwa argued.He said there was no dispute between the Zimbabwean government and the Forum; the dispute was between the government and the people who had claimed damages from it.What that means, he said, is that the current application before the tribunal is inadmissible, and it would be up to the 12 claimants to start afresh if they want to take their case to the Tribunal.This sort of objection gave the Tribunal ‘a disturbing insight’ into the reluctance that there is in Zimbabwe to deal with cases on their merit, Jeremy Gauntlett, representing the Forum, told the five Judges.He asked the Judges to send out a clear signal that the Tribunal would not allow parties before it to raise these sort of ‘frivolous points’.The Forum’s legal standing to act on behalf of people affected by human rights violations has been acknowledged time and again by the Government of Zimbabwe, Gauntlett said. ‘We are astonished that they now raise this as a point,’ he said.Having heard arguments only on the preliminary objections that were raised, the five Judges reserved their judgement on those points.Mutsonziwa and Prince Machaya represented the government of Zimbabwe.Gauntlett and Frank Pelser represented the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum on instructions from Susan Mutambasere-Manyere and Norman Tjombe.