STAFF REPORTER
ZIMBABWE’S courts have demonstrated independence and transparency by initiating a process to ensure that judges appointed under Constitution of Zimbabwe Amendment (No. 3) Act (CAA3) do not sit on the Constitutional Court bench hearing challenges to the same law.
Deputy Chief Justice Paddington Garwe postponed the matters to November 18 following a case management meeting at which parties discussed the composition of the bench and issues arising from the constitutional challenges.
The court initiated the process engaging lawyers representing both the applicants and respondents before reaching an agreement on the matter.
Speaking to the media after the court proceedings, President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s lawyer, Sylvester Hashiti, said his client was prepared to have the cases heard by any judges appointed to the bench.
“The President is ready to face any judge and we are ready for the case,” Hashiti said.
Lawyers representing the applicants also welcomed the process initiated by the court, saying they had agreed that the additional judges appointed under the amendment should not participate in hearing the cases.
“We agreed that we would prefer the matter to be heard without the additional judges appointed pursuant to the amendment.”
The two cases are Vhurande Mahlupeko versus Parliament of Zimbabwe and three others (CCZ 277/26), and former Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) legislator Prince Sibanda versus the President of Zimbabwe and two others (CCZ 271/26).
The development comes as the government recently declared CAA3 irreversible, arguing that it has completed all constitutionally prescribed stages of enactment, as it pushes back against legal challenges to the new presidential electoral system.
The repeated legal challenges to CAA3 have also raised concerns over what some have described as the filing of similar cases by the same litigants.
With CAA3 now at the implementation stage, judges and senators appointed under the new constitutional framework have already been sworn in, while the government maintains that the amendment has passed all constitutionally prescribed stages and its implementation is under way.
