By Sheila Sibanda | Barely 4 weeks after Justice minister Ziyambi Ziyambi threatened High Court judges accusing them of taking orders from hostile foreign nations, Presidential Spokesman George Charamba has threatened to deploy the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (Zacc) on the Law Society as well as “white law firms” said to be against government.
Charamba’s statement comes 2 years after his boss, Emmerson Mnangagwa announced saying he is now to go after lawyers and doctors who attend to political dissenters.
RETWEET! – Mnangagwa in Mwenezi clearly threatened brutality against doctors and lawyers also threatening to shorten the lives of people who make noise. pic.twitter.com/fJx5dOemL5
— ZimEye (@ZimEye) September 17, 2019
“Why does this racially fastidious auditor of professional conduct of lawyers so wilfully blind to this yelling anomaly which has persisted for decades? Shouldn’t Zacc move in to ask basic questions to both the society and the firm in question? Or higher bodies, now that State security is involved?” Charamba tweeted.
“Here we go: There’s a prominent white law firm whose books have gone unchecked for donkey years, including by the falsely punctilious Law Society of Zimbabwe which busily harasses indigenous law firms ironically in the name of protecting them.”
Charamba went on to allege that the white law firms were a conduit for foreign monies which funded the activities of the opposition in Zimbabwe.
“We have mechanisms for detecting such subterfuges. What I can’t suffer or countenance is a statutory body purporting to represent officers of the court turning the same members who make it up — or should — into vicarious subversives,” he said.