Organised Violence and Torture
in Zimbabwe in 1999

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7. Conclusions
Although gross human rights violations are always a cause for concern the context is always of enormous importance. Gross human rights violations occurring against a background of socio-economic stability and good governance are clearly a very different matter to such events occurring within a conflict situation or in a rapidly destabilising situation. In the latter situation there is usually the prospect of an increase sometimes a massive increase - as in the case of Rwanda or Sierra Leone - and this requires all concerned persons to consider emergency action.

The situation in Zimbabwe is undoubtedly a cause for major concern. Since the formation of the Human Rights Forum - in the midst of riots and civil disturbance - the socio-political situation has been deteriorating at an alarming rate. The near-demolition of the Zimbabwean economy has resulted in a huge increase in the number of very poor people and rampant inflation with massive and constant prices increases. There seems very little evidence that the ZANU-PF government has any policy in place to deal with these problems. The publication of the Consolidated Report on the Food Riots which was sent to the President and Senior Government Ministers as well as being widely circulated internally in the country produced no official response from government. This is again important since the Human Rights Committee of the United Nations had previously requested an independent commission of inquiry into the Food Riots - a call which government has also ignored. The Consolidated Report particularly stressed the need for open investigation in order to identify the factors leading to civil disturbance and human rights violations. This need for public scrutiny was stated very strongly in the report:

In conclusion, we would wish to point out that it is unacceptable for the Government to avoid any inquiry. The basis of a stable and democratic society requires that all actions of the Government be open to public scrutiny, especially where events have led to loss of life and widespread civil disturbance as is the case in the Food Riots. It is insufficient for Government or any of its agencies to merely assert that the principle of minimum force has been obeyed without testing this assertion in an open and public manner. Zimbabwe is in crisis, and it is incumbent upon the Government to take the steps to reduce both crisis and the conditions for crisis. Government is not the law, nor is it above the law, and it should set the example to the nation of open criticism by public inquiry.9

What has been of even greater concern for human rights in Zimbabwe has been the re-mergence of political torture and the government’s attitude to this in 1999. In the wake of the kidnapping and torture of Mark Chavunduka and Ray Choto by the Zimbabwe military all civil society made calls to the government to respect the rule of law, condemn this illegal action and ensure that the perpetrators were brought to book. The Government’s contempt for the rule of law even forced judges of the Supreme and the High Court into the unprecedented move of writing to the President to express their concern. None of these concerted actions had borne any fruit by the end of the year.

The President, the Attorney-General, senior Ministers and members of the Parliament have all made statements condoning the actions of the military and none have publicly retracted these. Thus the Judiciary remain to some extent at loggerheads with the Executive and the Parliament which does not bode well for the future. The perpetrators remain at large with no credible attempt at investigations as far as this can be established. It was gratifying, however, to see that the Minister of Home Affairs and the Commissioner of Police took very seriously the death threats against Ray Choto and Basildon Peta.

The importance of these attitudes of the President and the government to the torture of Chavunduka and Choto must be seen in relation to the other cases seen in 1999 and also to the riots cases. When government itself shows no will to investigate or control state-sponsored violence and torture it is a signal to all state agencies that a degree of practical impunity exists. This is so crucial in Zimbabwe where impunity for genocide and gross human rights violations had been the norm rather than the exception. In 1999 there was no sense that government saw human rights violations in a serious light.

The cases seen by the Human Rights Legal Unit show a worrying trend in the type of torture now being seen. There is an apparent trend towards the police using forms of torture that are more difficult to detect initially. Here the use of electrical shock and "falanga" or beatings on the soles of the feet must be highlighted and questions asked. Falanga has not been reported widely before in Zimbabwe10, but has been growing in frequency through the 1980s and the 1990s. It has been observed elsewhere that falanga tends to increase as the more obvious methods of torture become detected, or as public pressure against the use of torture grows.

Although it is not possible to estimate the frequency of torture country wide it is enough to point out that sufficient cases exist to cause concern. We must point out that these are not merely allegations of gross human violations and our contention that torture is a problem is supported by both medical evidence and judgements by the courts. Undoubtedly the many years of emergency powers have done little to contribute to a culture of human rights amongst the police a fact which is readily admitted by the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Zimbabwe Republic Police. It is for this reason that the ZRP has been working with the Legal Resources Foundation the Human Rights Research and Documentation Trust and the AMANI Trust to provide human rights training to senior staff trainers of recruits and soon recruits themselves.

However didactic education may by itself be insufficient to wholly change the problem. As Sir Nigel Rodley UN Special Rapporteur on Torture has frequently remarked the problem lies in police stations and not in classrooms and he has even more frequently remarked if police stations were made of glass there would be no torture. Here we would wish to point out that there is an analogy between human rights training for police and medical education. The attitudes of doctors are partly formed by their education in medical school and partly by their experience in hospitals with the role models of practicing doctors. So too will young policemen be influenced by their role models in police stations and there is a pressing need to reform the behaviour in police stations as much as there is need to put human rights in the curriculum of police training.

9 See Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum (1999), A Consolidated Report on the Food Riots, 19th to 23rd January 1999, Harare: Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum.

10 See AMANI Trust (1998), Survivors of Torture and Organised Violence from the 1970s War of Liberation, Harare: AMANI; See also CCJP/LRF (1997), Breaking the Silence Building True Peace A Report on the Disturbances in Matabeleland and the Midlands 1980 to 1988, Harare: Catholic Commission For Justice And Peace & Legal Resources Foundation. TOP