‘Independent’ judiciary, commissions: Whose independence?

AFRICAN FOCUS By Tafataona P. Mahoso

Those who have followed demands for “reform” by the MDC formations in Zimbabwe will notice that if these political formations were to be allowed to put their programmes into practice this country would end up with the following commissions:

Independent Land Commission, Independent Anti-Corruption Commission, Independent Media Commission, Independent Planning Commission, Independent Broadcasting Commission, Independent Judicial Appointments Commission, Independent Public Service Commission, Independent Gender Commission and so on . . .
Given the extreme partisanship and sectarianism which the MDC formations have imported with their foreign sponsorship into Zimbabwean politics, the first question which arises is: From which planet do the MDC formations intend to import enough “independent” persons, let alone resources, to build so many independent commissions?
Citizens can get some idea of the “independence” meant by the MDC formations if they examine the lists of candidates these parties have been presenting to the Standing Rules and Orders Committee (SROC) of Parliament for nomination to the various “independent” bodies. There is a high representation of former white Rhodesians being imported back into Zimbabwe via South Africa, to take up positions on these “independent” commissions. It is also important to remember that in her encounter with President Robert Mugabe on CNN on September 24 2009, “independent” journalist Christiane Amanpour indicated clearly and openly that Roy Bennett was the only definitely “independent” source of evidence which CNN should consult in order to determine whether President Robert Mugabe’s account of the quarrel between Zimbabwe and Britain was true! She, like MDC-T, also demanded to know why the same Roy Bennett had not been sworn in as Deputy Minister of Agriculture.
Perhaps our readers may wonder why we keep insisting that we are dealing with ideology and propaganda rather than independence or law. Just think of the concept of independent commission as language. Try to put it into any one of our national languages. Does it make sense? Even in English, does it make sense?
A commission has to be commissioned in order to have validity and authority. To commission means: an act of committing or giving authority to carry out a particular task or duty; the act of giving certain powers to a person or body; the act of entrusting someone with particular responsibilities; the state of being authorised to perform certain functions.
As a noun, a commission is a group of people lawfully authorised to perform certain duties or functions as a government agency. An “independent” commission in the normal world is a contradiction. Its independence exists as ideology or propaganda, not as reality. Before we explain the meaning of the demand by the MDC formations to set up unwieldy and expensive commissions in almost every sector, it might help to look at recent history. When the myth of willing-buyer-willing-seller in the 1979 Lancaster House Constitution failed to provide enough land to satisfy the dispossessed African majority by 1990, two views became prominent on how the land issue was to be resolved.
One view said that “the independent judiciary” would resolve the issue through the courts.
The other view said the judiciary, the courts and the law at that time (1990-1992) were part of the problem and had been part of the problem since the days of Cecil John Rhodes and the British South African Company. Africans had to wage the First Chimurenga and Second Chimurenga precisely because the judiciary, the law and the courts were the colonial instruments for the permanent racist dispossession of the African majority.
When the white Chief Justice Anthony Gubbay prepared to hear one of the land cases in early November 2000, the State asked him to remove himself from hearing the case because in many previous utterances he had already judged the African land reclamation movement and method to be illegal and criminal. The white Chief Justice went ahead to hear the case and on January 10 2001 he condemned widespread criticism of his conduct as an “onslaught” on the judiciary, an erosion of judicial independence. Denmark, Britain, the Commercial Farmers’ Union (CFU), the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA), the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), leaders of the Law Society of Zimbabwe (LSZ) and the International Bar Association (IBA) came out on the side of white settler farmers against the African land reclamation movement.
This line-up of views proved correct President Robert Mugabe’s statement on December 13 2000 that the courts and the law at that stage could not resolve the Zimbabwean land question.
But that was only the beginning of the struggle which we see being re-staged again in the form of “independent commissions”.
So, on February 6 2001 Chief Justice Gubbay came out politically and openly in support of the white settler farmers and attacked the leaders of the country, through the Press, for failure to arrest and lock up the land-hungry masses.
The white Chief Justice also openly attacked the African Judge President of the High Court at that time for admitting that the effect of the position taken by the Supreme Court against the African land reclamation movement had been to compromise the dignity and authority of the entire judiciary in the eyes of the overwhelming majority of the people, especially because the African land movement was a popular mass movement with organic community resonance.
The white Chief Justice later resigned and the African Judge President Godfrey Chidyausiku became Chief Justice.
Automatically, the replacement of a white Chief Justice by an African Chief Justice in the middle of the African land revolution was condemned as blatant patronage which destroyed the independence of the courts! The International Bar Association sent a delegation biased in favour of the white settler farmers and the former white Chief Justice. The delegation also helped the settlers to incite the NCA, LCZ, CFU, MDC, Legal Resources Foundation and Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights to come out openly on the side of the white settlers and against the dispossessed povo. The Financial Gazette openly declared on December 6 2001: “Zanu-PF takes over Zimbabwe’s courts: law experts say land judgment political.” This was in response to a new judgment on new land cases in which compulsory land acquisition, land redistribution and land resettlement were declared to be constitutional. Immediately, on April 17 2002, the illegal regime change lobby demanded constitutional reforms for the purpose of reversing land reform on behalf of the white settlers.
So, from this history and from the lists of persons submitted by the MDC formations for nomination to independent commissions, we get the message that white Rhodesians are “independent” and most capable of making “independent” judgments about the future of Zimbabwe! Any replacement of whites by Africans destroys the rule of law and undermines independence. Moving further, the MDC formations’ logic becomes even more revealing. The very same illegal regime change lobby which says white Rhodesians are independent judges of their own dispute with Zimbabwe is demanding that Zimbabwe’s war veterans and retired soldiers should never be allowed anywhere near these “independent” commissions. Why? Well, because, although the war veterans brought about Zimbabwe’s independence, they cannot themselves be independent! Instead, the appointment of any one or more of these people who brought independence must be condemned as undermining the independence of these commissions. In fact, it is a militarisation of these supposedly independent bodies.
After white Rhodesians, the other breed of persons the MDC formations favour for nomination and appointment are lawyers. These are to be preferred to any other discipline.
The Regime Change Strategy behind the Proliferation of “Independent Commissions”
The idea that a judiciary headed by a white Rhodesian in Zimbabwe is independent while one headed by an African is not independent; the idea that a commission including retired Rhodesian security officers is democratic and independent while one including retired war veterans of the Second Chimurenga is “militarised” — has already been established and understood through the examples cited. Readers should see the Zimbabwe Independent of October 2 2009 and internet sites and Misa Press statements in the same week. But our readers should not end there. There is still the problem of British, US and EU sponsorship, endorsement and funding attracted by the campaign for “independent commissions”. Why is there so much Anglo-Saxon interest and support for such a campaign? There were commissions long before the regime change onslaught against Zimbabwe. But if our readers check their old newspapers, there were no strenuous efforts to call them “independent” and there were no campaigns to have them sponsored by foreign governments through the NGO sector.
What is new? What is new is the failure of the regime change onslaught, which started in 1997, to achieve its objectives of removing and destroying the African liberation movement. What is new is the failure to reverse the African land reclamation movement to date. What is new is the determination still to overcome that failure.
This failure means that some of the methods of regime change, such as violence and military invasion, have now been abandoned. This means that a combination of instruments of “soft power” is now preferred.
One of those ever-present instruments is the Western media. In “Violence in and by the media”, George Gerbner explained this role.
“They (the media) serve as projective devices that isolate acts and people from meaningful contexts and set them up to be stigmatised . . . Stigma is a mark of disgrace that evokes disgraceful behaviour. Labelling some people barbarians makes it easier to treat them as barbarians would (treat them) . . . classifying some people as criminals permits dealing with them in ways otherwise criminal; it makes it legitimate to attack and kill them . . . Stigmatisation and demonising isolate their targets and set them up to be victimised.”
But the media alone cannot successfully destabilise Zimbabwe without credible individuals, NGOs and institutions to generate ready-framed events, stories and reports which fit the regime change agenda and language. In other words, the media war on Zimbabwe has no effect unless the catchment area for ready-framed events, stories and reports is increased. BBC, CNN, Aljazeera and other propaganda channels will have a hard time meeting the mission stated by Gerbner without sponsored individuals, NGOs and neoliberal institutions which can be primed to set off the spiral and orchestration of pseudo-events which can be used to fuel the regime change onslaught.
If we step back and look at the timing of the Nobel Prize for Peace which was given to US President Barrack Obama, we can see that the Nobel Committee played a role for imperialism and Nato which some of our commissions and proposed commissions are expected to play for the yet unsuccessful regime change forces. Obama was given a prize, which event has been globalised through mass media, not for any achievement but for a wishful (even dishonest) statement of intentions. The purpose is to boost Obama’s image at home at a time when there is a rising backlash against him, a backlash even within the African-American community, a backlash on the diplomatic front because of failure to dismantle George W. Bush’s global terror machine.
In the Financial Gazette for October 15 2009, Professor Ken Mafuka reports that Obama is being challenged on “all fronts”. So imperialism used the Nobel Prize for Peace as a timely means of shoring up his media image. This is done by using the prize to confirm that his good intentions are well meant. It has nothing to do with work achieved. Likewise, the dozen or so commissions demanded by the MDC formations are also meant to boost the false democratic credentials of these foreign-funded impositions as well-meaning “democrats”.