Justice served as corrupt judge dies

By Lance Guma

Samuel Zuze, a Chipinge magistrate notorious for his bias against MDC supporters, collapsed in court on Wednesday and was pronounced dead at St Peter’s Hospital in Checheche, the local MP has confirmed.

Chipinge East MP Mathias Mlambo, also a victim of Zuze’s controversial judgments, told SW Radio Africa that the magistrate “collapsed while in the process of passing judgment on more MDC activists brought before his court.”

The cause of death is not yet known although there was speculation of a heart attack. Superstitious members of the community are already blaming witchcraft for the death of a magistrate who was heavily despised in the area. Even the local MP said there was not much sorrow at Zuze’s death. Several sources have confirmed that Zuze will be buried in Rusape on Saturday.

Last year in September Zuze jailed Gift Mafuka for one year with hard labour for allegedly ‘insulting or undermining’ Mugabe’s authority as President. The suggestion was that Mafuka had called Mugabe ‘wrinkly’ and ‘old’ while commenting on t-shirts worn by two young boys. Three months of the sentence were suspended for five years on conditions of good behaviour.

It was only the intervention of the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights that Mafuka was granted bail by the same magistrate 3 months later. In the meantime he had suffered stays in Chipinge Prison and later Mutare Prison, from where he was to be released pending his appeal. The lawyer said the evidence was not sufficient to warrant a conviction and that the sentence was too excessive.

Last year Zuze again shot to prominence after presiding over a case in which he found four farmers guilty of refusing to leave their properties. Zuze had convicted and sentenced Algernon Taffs, Z.F Joubert, Mike Odendaal and Mike Jahme to pay US$800 fines and vacate their properties within 24 hours. It later turned out that Zuze had an offer letter from the Mugabe regime to take over Jahme’s farm.

A day after being convicted the four farmers made a successful urgent High Court application allowing them to stay on the farms until the appeal against conviction and sentence was concluded. A defiant Zuze refused to accept the order and instead caused the arrest of Commercial Farmers Union president Trevor Gifford and Dawie Joubert, son of one of the farmers, accusing them of contempt of court.

In July Zuze convicted the MDC-T MP for Chipinge South, Meki Makuyana on ‘trumped up charges’ of kidnapping, and sentenced him to 18 months in prison with hard labour, of which 6 months were suspended. This meant the MP would have had to serve an effective 12 months in prison. Mathias Mlambo, the MP for Chipinge East was convicted of inciting public violence by the same magistrate.

A total of 4 MP’s from Manicaland province were targeted by the regime. Mlambo for example was later acquitted in the High Court while Makuyana’s case is still to be resolved owing to delaying tactics by the late Zuze. SW Radio Africa