Under Siege: Human rights and the rule of law in Zimbabwe

Speech delivered at the Monash University Law Chambers, Castan Centre for Human Rights Law Lecture

Good evening everyone. It’s very heart-warming to see the magnificent turn out for a country which, after all, is located in the forgotten continent and a country that doesn’t have any oil or anything else like that to attract the attention of the international community. I would like to speak to you tonight about the current human rights situation in Zimbabwe and the erosion of the rule of law that has taken place in Zimbabwe since the year 2000.

In addressing this topic I am aware that in the course of the last five years many Australians have been focused on Zimbabwe but sadly often for the wrong reasons. The debate appears to turn around whether or not the Australian cricket team should tour Zimbabwe or whether that tour should be reciprocated and much of the human rights focus has been centred on the plight of white commercial farmers who have been evicted from their farms. Sadly I think that focus is itself an indictment of the media and perhaps of politicians not just in Australia but elsewhere because there is this preoccupation on those issues. But in reality the human rights situation in Zimbabwe deals with far more serious issues than cricket. The focus of human rights organisations should be on issues that involve, in my view, crimes against humanity and in the early 1980’s genocide.

To understand the current human rights situation in Zimbabwe one has to consider the historical context. What I’d like to do at the outset before I go to detail the current situation is to paint a thumbnail sketch of the human rights history in Zimbabwe since 1980. I divide it into four broad chapters, the first concerns the period immediately after independence the period 1980 through to 1982 which I would describe as the honeymoon period. Sadly many in the international community see what has happened in the last five years as an aberration. They are surprised by what has happened and they point to this honeymoon period; this period Zanu PF and Robert Mugabe when surprised the world. In 1980 Robert Mugabe confounded the international community when he announced his policy of reconciliation which accommodated the white minority and which brought to an end a bloody chapter in Zimbabwe’s history. And rightfully the world embraced Mugabe for that; the world recognised that that policy of reconciliation would play a vital role in bringing apartheid to an end.

Under Seige – Human Rights and the Rule of Law

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