Open Letter to Zimbabwe Human Rights Lawyers
August 20, 2003 (Posted on this site: August 23, 2003)

The Chairperson
Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights
P O Box CY 1393
Causeway, Zimbabwe

Dear Madam:

REF: CONSTRUCTIVE ENGAGEMENT, AND THE UNHOLY ALLIANCE BEHIND LAWYERS’ FEES

We refer you to your letter dated June 26, 2003 directed to the “alleged” Zimbabwean Minister of Home Affairs, Mr. Kembo Mohadi, which was posted on the kubatana.net website.

With due respect, can you please kindly explain the substantive value of such response to Mugabe’s old tricks? i.e. that is to say; the people of Zimbabwe are all too familiar with the litany of atrocities that Mugabe has committed against the economy and the people of Zimbabwe.

Of what significance and consequence is the purpose of your communication to a regime which has evidently proved incorrigible for many many hard and long years (for the people of Zimbabwe) can this be?

Is it not true that you are more likely to get foreign donations and support if you evidently take pot-shots at such tinpot dictatorship at the expense of real and meaningful campaign against such despots?
Or is it a question of the lunatics running the asylum on a cost-effective basis (when donor agencies fund your pronouncements against the Mugabe regime)?

On further analysis of your above referred to letter, we have also noted several facts and opinions that have been ‘professionally’ misrepresented/mispresented by your letter. Examples of such facts are as listed below:

• a) evident facts that could even be sought and verified by your offices will prove to you that paragraph 4 of your letter gives false information about the political status/position of Mr. Welshman Mabhena. Mr. Mabhena has never in his political career represented the people of Kezi. Matebeleland North province (namely Nkayi) has always been his constituency.
  
  
• b) If you have to refer to the late Stephen Nkomo before his death, your qualification of his status as that of “national hero” at the time is false. Stephen Nkomo was declared national hero many years after the referred to incident in your letter (after his death).

Ladies and Gentlemen, you cannot appeal to a criminal to investigate himself of his own crimes, just as your letter of June 26 appeals to Mr. Mohadi and his Zanu PF war criminals. The revelations by your analogue of crime events perpetrated by the Zanu PF Mugabe and Mohadi regime indicates that you have done your homework in sofaras to uncover the evidence of such crimes by such criminals i.e. the attachment to your letter refers –– therefore needless for you to lower your status to a level that you now and then approach criminals as “Masters”.

And finally, is it not right that officers of the court (which is what lawyers are by profession) should act in good faith to their constituency by acting truthfully in the circumstances –– irrespective of the apparent pecuniary benefit motives?

Eagerly awaiting your response,

Yours truly,

The FreeAfrica Website
For Political & Human Rights Issues.

Note 1: this letter and a copy of your original letter (the ZLHR letter to Kembo Mohadi) have been copied to the attention of various national and international governmental and non-governmental organizations and/or individuals.

Note 2: to read the full letter by the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, please click on the following link:

http://www.kubatana.net/html/archive/hr/030626zlhr.asp?sector=HR