Home >> Africa >> Zimbabwe  Email  Print African Union Probes Zimbabwe Human Rights Abuses Lawrence Ndlovu - 5/17/2007 HARARE- THE African Union (AU), long accused of being a sitting duck with no powers to whip errant members last week took a bold step by agreeing to send a fact-finding mission to Zimbabwe. The Pan African Parliament, established in 2004 by Article 17 of the Constitutive Act of the AU, met in Johannesburg last week and overwhelmingly voted for a motion to send a mission to investigate allegations of human rights violations.
The alleged human rights violations entail, the wanton arrests and beating of members of the civic society and opposition, media and murder of political activists. A total of 149 members overwhelmingly voted to send a mission to Zimbabwe against a flimsy challenge from 29 members among them Zimbabweans and its SADC peers.
The developments in South Africa put pressure on President Mugabe ahead of the harmonized Presidential and Parliamentary elections next year. At an emergency summit in Tanzania in March, Southern African Development Community (SADC) heads of state appointed Mbeki to help end the crisis in Zimbabwe by bringing the government and the MDC to the negotiating table.
On Tuesday last week police assaulted Law Society of Zimbabwe president Beatrice Mtetwa and dozens of her colleagues who were protesting against the arrest of lawyers Alec Muchadehama and Martin Makoni two weeks ago.
Muchadehama and Makoni are legal counsels for 13 Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) activists jailed on "terror" charges and had been arrested on their way from the High Court where they had lodged fresh bail applications on behalf of the activists arrested in March.
The lawyers spent a weekend in police custody only to be released on $500 000 bail. During their incarceration, the High Court issued three orders, which were ignored by the police.
This prompted the lawyers to march and hand in a petition to Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa, Attorney General (AG) Sobusa Gula-Ndebele and Police Commissioner Augustine Chihuri demanding full protection of lawyers and prosecutors in the execution of their duties. Police crushed the demonstration attacking Mtetwa and her colleagues.
In March police brutally assaulted MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai, National Constitutional Assembly Chairman Lovemore Madhuku and 35 other members on their way to a prayer meeting organized by the Save Zimbabwe Campaign, a coalition of both churches and political parties. The meeting had been given a clearance by the High Court.
But Zimbabwe has said that it will not go down without a fight. Zanu Pf Chief Whip Joram Gumbo who attended the meeting said the Zimbabwean government still has the right to bar the mission.
Gumbo, who is the vice-chairman of the Southern African Regional Caucus on Politics, took a swipe at the Parliament describing it as "just a noise-making organisation" with no legislative powers.
Gumbo said Zimbabwe could still block the mission if it so wishes as the parliament will have to write a letter to the Government informing it of the intention to visit.
“There is already a Sadc initiative under way led by President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa. "Our position is that too many cooks spoil the broth," he told the state controlled Sunday Mail.
Analysts say the delegation from the Pan African Parliament will find it difficult to visit Zimbabwe, which has a long history of frustrating fact -finding missions.
In 2005, an envoy from the AU Commission on Human and People's Rights Tom Nyandunga was stranded at a local hotel after the government said the mission had not been approved. Nyandunga was on a fact-finding mission after the government’s internationally condemned “Clean Up Operation” that left hundreds of thousands of people homeless. Zimbabwe told the AU to withdraw the envoy until "proper procedures" had been met.
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