Justice is a right not an option

Uplifting trust and not bringing about bewilderment in communities is essential for a justice system. For Zimbabwe’s justice system to instil public confidence, it must be fair to all citizens not some. When certain population groups are abandoned and confronted by a systemic withdrawal of their rights by overtly compromised systems, they lose faith in the systems and stop engaging which risks compromising the legitimacy of the justice system in its entirety.

A justice system is best described as the network of institutions – the police, courts, prison services, probation services – that uphold laws, resolve conflicts, punish wrongdoing, and protect rights, aiming to maintain social order through criminal and civil processes, ensuring fair trials, and administering penalties like imprisonment or rehabilitation. Fairness in the text, its interpretation, and application of the laws must be the embodiment of a justice system.

The justice system must never save power and privilege but fairness; justice must not be influenced by who you know but what you have done or what you need. It must be the core principle that all are bound by and entitled to the benefit of laws equally; everyone should feel systems, institutions, and laws represent them.

Decades of postcolonial misrule in Zimbabwe have presided over the gradual but damaging erosion of the justice system. Lack of moral clarity among those in power has overseen the weaponisation of justice and normalisation of selective justice; it has trivialised the justice system into a conspiracy that withdraws rights from certain communities while extending favour towards others by tribe, ethnicity, status, and  political allegiance.

Let us be clear, preferential justice is not justice but weaponisation of the legal system, and it is not normal. The ZANU PF-controlled government has overseen a heavily politicised justice system that has failed to project justice to all communities in the country, especially its apparent failure to address past crimes — Gukurahundi crimes against humanity — has been a sore thumb in Matabeleland.

For political reasons and the need to protect perpetrators of genocide some of whom are still serving in government today, the ZANU PF-controlled government has resorted to interfering in the justice system thereby compromising the independence of judiciary and hindering judges from effectively performing their judiciary duties that include ensuring fairer outcomes for all victims of crime.

We must wrestle against the inherent injustice within the Zimbabwean justice system which stems from deep-seated issues like tribal bias, lack of access to information, politicisation of justice, economic inequality, discriminatory policing, and systemic barriers after release (reintegration difficulties), creating cycles of poverty and crime, rather than true fairness or rehabilitation for all. At the core of the problems within the Zimbabwe criminal justice system is an underfunded legal aid, disproportionate incarceration of poor citizens, coerced confessions, punishment over reform, and a justice gap where millions lack access to justice for everyday problems.

Justice becomes impotent whenever judiciary independence is replaced by partisanship and where the judiciary is turned into a tool of vengeance by a corrupt executive. When the judiciary is morally vacant, biased and persistently used to violate the rights of those who dare challenge the status quo and dream of a world beyond the absurdities of corruption and the daily abuse of power, courts become epicentres of injustice where the average person is intimidated, stripped of his dignity, and given disproportionately long incarceration for standing up against unjust laws that have always protected the rich, the wealthy and the connected criminals from prosecution.

The primary concern of all justice loving Zimbabweans must be to reform a system of criminal justice that has proven to be biased towards consolidation and preservation of power in the executive branch of government and marginalising the public at all costs instead of delivering justice. Everyone is agreed that a system that continues to treat people better if they are rich and guilty than if they are poor and innocent needs urgent reforms, and that a system that denies the poor the legal help they need, that makes wealth and status more important than culpability, must be changed.

Equality before the law must be the aim of any justice system; the system must seek to return righteous people what is theirs and deprive wrongdoers what is not theirs; it must ensure everyone, regardless of status, wealth, or background, is subject to the same laws, treated equally by the legal system, and receives equal protection, forming a core part of the rule of law and fundamental justice, ensuring no one is above the law and justice is blind. While equal treatment is the goal, the system must emphasise equity and allow for reasonable adjustment to ensure differences (physical and mental – age, disability, etc) are factored in and systems adopt different approaches to achieve real equal outcomes.