Zimbabwe squeezes civil liberties further

Dancing, cheering politicians approved sweeping constitutional changes today that prominent lawyers have called the greatest challenge yet to Zimbabwean civil liberties.

Ruling party representatives erupted into celebration after Parliament voted 103 to 29 to endorse the constitutional overhaul that sharply restricts property rights and allows the government to deny passports to its critics.

The 22-clause Constitutional Amendment Bill now goes to President Robert Mugabe to sign into law.

The slate of amendments, the 17th since independence from Britain in 1980, abolishes freehold property titles and strips landowners of their right to appeal against expropriation.

Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa said this would stop 5,000 evicted white farmers from frustrating land redistribution to black Zimbabweans.

“It will close the chapter of colonisation,” Chinamasa said during a stormy half-hour debate that preceded the vote.

The bill also gives the government authority to deny passports if it is deemed in the national interest.

“This will take away the right of those people to go outside the country and ask other countries to impose sanctions on Zimbabwe,” said Chinamasa, who is among 200 of Mugabe’s elite barred from travelling or owning bank accounts in the US and European Union countries.

A new 66-seat Senate will be formed, which critics charge the ruling party will use to increase its patronage powers.

Lovemore Madhuku, whose National Constitutional Assembly reform alliance mobilised opposition to Mugabe’s attempt in 2000 to entrench his rule indefinitely, predicted swift implementation of the changes.

“I think (Mugabe) is likely to sign the bill into law in the fastest possible time – even within four days or so,” said Madhuku. “He wants to have elections for the Senate by October.”

Madhuku said the amendments add to a host of repressive measures already imposed by Mugabe’s 25-year-old regime.

“But in time, it will eventually collapse,” he said. “Do you think the people are going to accommodate this for all time?”

There had been concerns within Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front that the party might not mobilise enough support to pass the bill after it cleared a preliminary ballot with just 61 votes to 28. The party, though, controlled 107 of Parliament’s 150 seats, more than the two-thirds required to change the constitution.

Twenty-eight members of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, which has 41 seats in Parliament, voted against the bill.

The lone independent legislator, Mugabe’s former propaganda chief Jonathan Moyo, faced a barrage of catcalls from his former colleagues when he too opposed the changes.

The opposition says approval of the amendments will destroy any hope of agreement with Western donors for desperately needed aid.

A team from the International Monetary Fund wraps up a two-week visit on Friday to reassess Zimbabwe’s economic crisis ahead of a September 9 board meeting which could expel the country for failing to make payments on arrears.

The seizure of white-owned commercial farms, combined with years of drought, have crippled the country’s agriculture-based economy. Some four million are in urgent need of food aid in what was once a regional breadbasket, according to UN estimates.