Feature - Judicial system under strain

The resignation this month of 10 senior magistrates citing low pay is the latest blow to hit Zimbabwe's struggling justice system. A parliamentary report into Zimbabwe's prisons in June found that inmates awaiting trail can spend up to four years in jail as a result of court backlogs, due to staff shortages. A statement last week by Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) expressed the group's concern. The ZLHR said understaffing and low morale at the magistrate's courts had led to "disturbing incidences of delay in the remanding of accused persons as well as the delivery of judgments in general". The ZLHR also noted delays in the passing of judgements in cases deemed "political". It urged law enforcement agents and the courts to be mindful of the constitutional rights of accused persons that they be tried "within a reasonable time". The parliamentary report stressed that Zimbabwe's prisons were seriously overcrowded. Slightly more than 25,000 men and women are serving prison terms or are on remand. The prisons, however, have only the capacity for 16,000. Under the congested conditions, diseases such as diarrhoea, scabies and HIV/AIDS-related illnesses were rife. The country's food crisis, which affects around half of all Zimbabweans, represents an additional problem for inmates and was highlighted at the weekend by the country's most high-profile prisoner, opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai. Freed on bail on Friday after two weeks in detention on treason charges, Tsvangirai told the BBC that jail conditions were a "scandal yet to explode". He shared an overcrowded cell with 75 other people who "have very little food and their health condition is deteriorating". "It is well known we have food shortages in Zimbabwe. It is only logical that prisoners feel the effects," Zimbabwe Prisons Service (ZPS) spokesman, Frank Meki, said at the begining of the year. Women's organisations say the plight of female prisoners can be particularly bad. The separation of male and female prisoners is the furthest the law goes in recognising differences between the sexes, consultant Jill Makarati told IRIN. She said, for example, the law was silent on the provision and disposal of sanitary supplies for menstruating women, or facilities for breastfeeding mothers. ZPS was allocated Zim $15 billion (US $19 million) for its 42 prisons in this year's national budget. But according to Meki, funds have all but run out halfway into the budget year, and ZPS has been forced to apply for supplemtary financing to meet its obligations. Stopgap measures like granting amnesty to prisoners seemed to have done little to avert the problem of overcrowding. A total of 5,500 prisoners were released in January this year in an amnesty granted by President Robert Mugabe. But the number of inmates is climbing back to its original level. Zimbabwe has a community service programme under which offenders can be sentenced to do community work at public institutions like hospitals and schools while living at home. That option was not being properly utilised, according to High Court Judge President Paddington Garwe. He recently told a meeting of judicial officers that most prisoners in Zimbabwe's jails had committed petty crimes and should be considered for community service rather than prison terms. Minister of Justice Patrick Chinamasa said the government planned to construct seven more prisons to deal with the problem of congestion. "Our prisons are overcrowded, making it difficult to maintain acceptable health standards. There is, therefore, a need to increase the number of prisons, as it is the only way we can ease congestions," he was quoted as saying. Critics, however, have argued that building more jails would not solve the underlying problem. This included a serious shortage of magistrates, prosecutors and legal officers at the Attorney General's office, which had brought the functions of the courts to a near halt. Overall the magistrate's courts have a backlog of 60,000 cases. By mid-March this year, the backlog of criminal cases in the capital, Harare, alone stood at 3,200, while pending civil cases were at 12,000. By April, the same courts had vacancies for 59 magisterial posts. A former magistrate, who declined to be named, alleged that the high staff turnover was due to the justice ministry undervaluing the contributions of magistrates. "Our colleagues in private practice charge at least Zim $200,000 [US $256] for a one-day bail application at the High Court - that is slightly above the monthly salary of a senior magistrate," the former magistrate told IRIN. The ZLHR statement said that while it appreciated "the constraints under which the members of the judiciary and the magistrates are operating", a deliberate effort "has to be made by the judiciary to hand down judgements efficiently, fairly and with reasonable promptness".