By Sindile Ncube- If the Zimbabwean constitution was observed correctly, the majority of the people at the top of Zanu pf would have been arrested way back in the 1980s.

The reason why this has never happened is because the judiciary is  so far deep inside the pockets of Zanu that it is used to clean up the party’s metaphorical bottom.

Recently, there has been this fake furore about the extension of tenor of that judge who legalised the 2017 coup who then went on to preside a whitewash of the ConCourt hearing about election rigging in the 2018.  I’m no law expert, and I have all the respect for all the lawyers out there who work hard defending the defenceless people in Zimbabwe.

However, I  get frustrated whenever I see Zimbabweans spending days on end quoting sections of the law and constitution in an effort  to demonstrate the illegality of Zanu’s actions in this saga.

It is frustrating because by now no one should be in any doubt that the constitution and the law in Zimbabwe is what the Zanu presidium and military says it is. The Zimbabwean judiciary is essentially Zanu’s legal department.  

They are another arm of the party just like the war vets, the military, green bombers and a raft of other subsidised henchmen. The only difference is that the judges are more coherent when justifying their function in the country’s dictatorship.

Moreover, judges possess a facade of respectability from wearing those wigs and robes. But if they took off those costumes you couldn’t tell them apart from the rest of the wrinkly old men in Zanu who are ruining the country.

In fact, some of the judges are also war veterans and former soldiers which is typical of Zanu to have revolving doors between its instruments of power.

Whether a judge is given the stamp to be chief justice until they are 156 years is not the real problem. The problem is that all the top judges in this dictatorship are oversubsidised legal  enablers whose job it is to whitewash Zanu’s human rights abuses and criminality. P

eople still have fresh memories of those judges snarling and frowning during that 2018 ConCourt hearing the end of which they ignored clear evidence of electoral tampering. But the judicial isn’t completely oppressive of the Zimbabwean people all the time about everything.

No. It serves justice in some issues, but on the important issue about who rules the country and who gets to get away with criminality, the judiciary will always serve the interests of whoever is in control of Zanu.

We saw this in 2017 during the coup when Mugabe’s house was surrounded by armed soldiers. The courts somehow found an angle to say that the coup was legal because at that moment Mugabe had lost power and ED and Chiwenga were now deciding the law.

Right now there is an ongoing campaign to get people to register to vote in the 2023 election. Indeed, registering is one of the steps people should take in order to get their voices heard, but the vote will need to be secured.

One of the ways of securing the vote is to have people observing the votes,  their transportation and most importantly the tallying at ZEC HQ. This is what we democrats should be focused on, not these internal squabbles in Zanu. 2023 is not far, let’s keep our eyes on the prize.