Magistrate Samuel Zuze's offer letter

Please see our Action Alert below.

Farmers in Chipinge have been having a terrible time in recent days. SW Radio Africa reported yesterday that two farmers, Dawie Joubert and the ex-President of the CFU, Trevor Gifford, were arrested yesterday for apparently being ‘in contempt of court’. SWRA reported that the men had been going to the assistance of four other farmers – Algernon Taffs, Mr Z.F Joubert (Dawie Joubert’s father), Mike Odendaal and Mike Jahme – who were all convicted for refusing to leave their properties. (The full details affecting these farmers on SWRA).

We have just been advised that Trevor Gifford and Dawie Joubert are now facing the weekend in a Mutare cell, after a court case organised from Chipinge failed to take place today because there was no magistrate available to hear their case. The CFU’s current president, Deon Theron, told SWRA yesterday that lawyers in the Chipinge area were refusing to take the case, and that they were also battling to find legal representation for the men.

In fact, both men should not be imprisoned at all.

A last minute stay of eviction was granted by the High Court on Wednesday after an urgent application was filed by the farmers’ legal representatives shortly after their sentencing. The High Court ruled that they could remain on their properties until the appeal against their conviction and sentences were concluded. But Magistrate Dzuze on Thursday refused to recognise the High Court order and is being accused of ‘grossly exceeding his jurisdiction.’ Joubert and Gifford had tried to deliver a letter to Dzuze clarifying the High Court’s position, but the Magistrate instead responded by ordering their arrest  (via SWRA).

Sources told us yesterday that the real reason for MagistrateZuze’s zeal is because he is lined up to be a beneficiary of Trevor Gifford’s farm. Zuze’s position of power affords him the opportunity to ignore the rule of law, and use it to achieve his own personal objectives. His actions make a total mockery of any principle of justice, and reveal him to be unfit for his job.

ZLHR Press Release – 25 Jan: High Court Judge, Justice Chinembiri Bhunu, on Monday 25 January 2010 declared Peter Michael Hitschmann an adverse or hostile witness, whom the State is at large to cross-examine.

Justice Bhunu, who delivered his long-delayed ruling in an application filed by the State seeking to impeach its main witness in the ongoing trial of Deputy Agriculture Minister-Designate Roy Bennett said Hitschmann’s demeanor in the witness box constitutes that of a hostile or adverse witness.

The Judge said Hitschmann portrayed the demeanor of a deeply aggrieved citizen who has an axe to grind with the State and its functionaries.

Justice Bhunu ruled that Hitschmann presented himself as a “melancholic wounded weeping soul who has been gravely brutalized and tortured at the hands of the State, its organs and functionaries.” (more…)

Much has been made of the change trading in dollars and rands. Shops shelves are full, and prices are now quoted in stable currencies. Apart from the obvious good news that food is available in Zimbabwe once again, what is the impact on the economic lives of ordinary Zimbabweans? The table below lists common shopping items, with their prices in US$ and Rands (working at the commonly used conversion rate of $1 = R7.50).

Imagine that you are a teacher, earning approximately US$150 a month, and that this salary has to cover rent, lights and water, phone bills, transport, medical costs etc etc – as well as your daily shopping. How would YOU economise?

The highlighted section at the end of the table features a handful of well known brand-name items to enable you to do direct price comparisons with shopping wherever you are in the world.

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In December 2008 a close relative of a colleague of mine skipped the country – I’ll call her Tandy. She told her daughter she was going to town to do some shopping, but said nothing to her family members. They worried themselves senseless when they didn’t hear from her for days. Eventually they were told she had gone to South Africa to look for a job – this news only added to their worries: she didn’t have a passport so would be bribing her way across the border, and being a pretty young women, the thoughts of what could happen to her were especially frightening.

It was a few weeks before they received a sms message, sent via a borrowed phone, to say she had arrived and was well. Understandably, anger set in; her father was especially incensed at her actions.

It emerged some time later that Tandy had been pestering her husband for some years to leave Zimbabwe, for them to try and start a better life in South Africa. He had been refusing, and it seems she decided to take matters into her own hands. We can only speculate on why she didn’t say goodbye, but most assume that her father – a fierce individual – may well have gone nuts with anger and done all he could to stop her going. As for not saying goodbye to her daughter: I raised my eyebrows at this, but my colleague commented that lots and lots of people in Zimbabwe have been forced to leave their families behind so this in itself was ‘normal’ – saying goodbye might have been unbearably hard for her to do.

Phone calls from Tandy to her family through 2009 were rare, and most of the contact was restricted to sms messages. On one occasion she told her daughter that when she saw her next she’d be bringing her “lots of things” – toys and clothes – but she refused to give a contact telephone number saying her phone had been stolen. This was the first indication that all was probably not well.

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