RITA Makarau . . . says judiciary is not being appreciated in Zimbabwe

HARARE – A frank admission this week by Judge President Rita Makarau that the judiciary was barely able to function, hit by corruption and under-funding, is the closest yet to an official confirmation that Zimbabwe is fast becoming a failed state, analysts said. 

Makarau on Monday broke with tradition to openly criticise President Robert Mugabe for undermining the judiciary by starving it of resources and reducing it to “begging for its sustenance”. 

The court that permanently sits in the capital and in Bulawayo was unable to hold circuit courts in other major centres because there was no money. 

Court libraries were basically empty, judges and magistrates lack basic stationery, while corruption has taken root among critical but poorly paid judicial support staff, said Makarau, speaking at the opening of the 2007 High Court legal year. 

“Clearly Makarau’s speech indicates the wheels have come off,” University of Zimbabwe (UZ) political scientist and a Mugabe critic, John Makumbe told ZimOnline. “She has been forthright and very direct about the problems that are inflicting the third arm of state and to me we are officially becoming a failed state.” 

Zimbabwe is in the grip of a debilitating economic crisis, marked by rising poverty, unemployment, shortages of food and the world’s highest inflation of 1281.1 percent. The crisis has left the Harare administration scrounging for funds at every level of government. 

But the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe says corruption - especially in public institutions - has become so endemic that it was now as much a threat to national survival as hyperinflation, which the government has branded the country’s number one scourge. 

Makarau, who last year sharply criticised the prison services for housing inmates under inhuman conditions, said pleas for the treasury to increase funding for the judiciary had gone unheeded. 

But it is not only the judiciary that the government has struggled to keep afloat! 

The public health sector that caters for the majority of Zimbabweans has ground to a halt after state doctors, later joined by some nurses, began striking four weeks ago demanding more pay and better working conditions. 

The government admits health workers deserve more money but says it does not have enough in its coffers to bankroll the 8 000 percent salary hike doctors are demanding to cushion themselves against the rampant inflation. 

Away from the crumbling public health sector, cash-strapped local government authorities are failing to provide services to residents, who are now forced to contend with burst sewers, water cuts, uncollected refuse and roads with crater-like potholes. 

Key national infrastructure and strategic state companies such as National Railways of Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority, Air Zimbabwe and Zimbabwe Iron and Steel Company are all technically insolvent and remain open chiefly for patronage purposes. 

Government supporters, who owe their jobs to Mugabe’s ruling ZANU PF party, run most of the state firms. 

“Makarau is only speaking like that because things are even worse than that. Basically she is saying the state is neglecting the judiciary and I think this is a mouthful coming from the President of the High Court,” said Eldred Masunungure, chairman of the UZ’s department of politics and administrative studies. 

“Justice is no longer being administered and that is a major failure of any state,” he added. 

Makarau criticised the way in which powerful government politicians and private sector executives were always able to find enough foreign currency to import luxury good s and vehicles or to send their children to expensive schools abroad while the very pillars of the state such as the judiciary were crumbling because of lack of resources. - ZimOnline