Posted on 10/21/2002 2:06:29 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
HARARE, Zimbabwe - Government lawyers seeking to strip veteran human rights campaigner Judith Todd of her Zimbabwe citizenship asked the Supreme Court Monday for a postponement.
Todd, 57, daughter of the late former Prime Minister Garfield Todd, filed suit after Zimbabwe's registrar general, Tobaiwa Mudede, said she had automatically forfeited her citizenship because she did not renounce any claim to New Zealand citizenship that she may have inherited from her father.
Todd's case, being funded by international donors, could outline the rights and duties of up to 2 million Zimbabweans of foreign descent.
Authoritarian President Robert Mugabe passed tough new citizenship laws last year stripping many foreign-born whites of their Zimbabwean citizenship, claiming that 40,000 whites of British descent were behind opposition to his 22-year rule. However, under the law many black Zimbabweans of Zambian and Mozambican parentage now face becoming stateless.
Godfrey Chidyausiku, a former Mugabe minister appointed chief justice of the Supreme Court, had angry exchanges with Todd's lawyer, Adrian de Bourbon, in court Monday.
Chidyausiku criticized de Bourbon for not presenting the court with New Zealand statutes on citizenship. However, de Bourbon protested that it was up to the government to prove Todd held New Zealand citizenship. He said it was not up to her to renounce a theoretical right she has never attempted to exert.
The court said it would rule later in the week on a government request for postponement to allow time to get copies of New Zealand statutes.
Zimbabwe has been racked by political unrest and economic collapse since Mugabe lost a constitutional referendum in February 2000. His claims to victory in later parliamentary and presidential elections have been widely challenged.
Garfield Todd, who died last week at 94, campaigned for black advancement in Zimbabwe when it was a British colony known as Southern Rhodesia. Although the government wants to declare him a national hero, the registrar stripped him of his citizenship and right to vote before the presidential elections last March because he was not born in Zimbabwe.
Judith Todd said Friday declaring her father a hero would be "inappropriate" and an "embarrassment" because he abhorred the ruling Zanu-PF party's "suppression of democracy, erosion of civil liberties, assassination of opposition officials and supporters, arrests, torture, and the climate of fear spread throughout the country."
Garfield Todd is due to be buried Sunday at his farm near Zvishavane, 500 kilometers (310 miles) south of Harare.
Mugabe would lose in any free and fair poll - Zimbabwe Arrests White Opposition Leader *** The MDC says 700 of its candidates have been barred from registering or intimidated from running in the polls. On Sunday it said it had received reports from various parts of the country showing the ruling ZANU-PF had stepped up violence to prevent Zimbabweans from voting freely. "Several MDC candidates and their agents have been blocked from entering the polling stations while some have been assaulted and a few have been reported missing," the MDC said.
Police and electoral officials said they had not received any reports of intimidation and Mugabe's ZANU-PF party dismissed the charges as "a pack of the usual lies." "The truth is that the MDC is frustrated at its failure to win the support of a majority of the people of this country," a ZANU-PF spokesman said. The allegations were also dismissed by Thomas Bvuma, a spokesman for the Electoral Supervisory Commission, who told Zimbabwe state radio the elections were going smoothly and the authorities had not received any complaints.
The MDC, which accuses Mugabe of stealing victory in a presidential election in March, says Mugabe has resorted to political violence in the council elections because he knows he would lose any free and fair poll. ***
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