choose whether or not I was fit to join the cult. What cult, one may ask?? Simply put, it was the self-serving corruption cult where everyone has a price and most importantly the golden rule is ‘serve the ruling party and ask no questions’.Today I thought of my old boss and the day I came face to face with the devil himself, a defining moment where I had to choose whether or not I was fit to join the cult. What cult, one may ask?? Simply put, it was the self-serving corruption cult where everyone has a price and most importantly the golden rule is ‘serve the ruling party and ask no questions’.
In my search for a career that spoke to me, I, at some point found myself retraining and becoming a Magistrate at the Harare Magistrates’ Court. What a proud moment it was, for someone who is sensitively aware of society’s injustice and will speak out against any injustice whether or not it’s been directed to me, I had placed myself at the helm of the justice delivery system. I would like to say I’m not sure when the rude awakening happened, realizing that nothing was what it seemed like, but looking back, it was a gradual process although then I was either in denial or in my trademark die-trying mode.
I can summarize how things go down in the Zimbabwean courts this way: Ideally a Magistrate is an independent person who has the sole discretion of what goes down in their courtroom. In reality, at each station there is a strategic leader who bows down to the powers that be, at a price of course and he or she likewise ensures a strategic allocation of cases and courts. Nothing should ever go wrong. With people in such solidified positions, the judicial system is quite open to being personalized.
Fresh and optimistic I walked into my office one fine morning. Before I even got a chance to place my behind on the old school, red leather covered chair, my phone extension went on a ringing spree. On the other end the booming voice of the most influential person at the country’s ultimate notorious magistrates’ court came online. I always associated his voice with his beer gut, which could pass for a nine months pregnant woman carrying nothing less than triplets. A call from the ‘boss’ as my peers and I called him always gave me a tight knot in the stomach, there was never knowing what was coming.
On this occasion I was being summoned to his office immediately, as if there was ever a time one would be given an option to see him at their own convenience! I complied.
Madam, how are you today?
Oh well, there came the greeting, accompanied by a sly smile and the constant licking of his lower lips. I resisted the temptation to offer him some Vaseline (petroleum jelly) in case his lips were dry, which they must always had been!
I started listening to what seemed like a random narration of weekend shenanigans. So his mate had gone to a bar which was quite popular those days and a bar fight had broken out. The boss’ friend who was obviously a decent man of unquestionable morals and would never ever dream of picking fights had been caught up in this debacle. “Madam, you know grievous body harm?” I kind of got the emphasis here and made all the right sympathetic noises. The injuries were so bad that the man’s jaw was broken, his mouth had even gone sideways! He was not going to be able to talk for a long while and would probably need to travel to South Africa to undergo some surgeries.
Finally, we got to the point of the story.
The man who’d committed the offence was due to appear in my court that morning. The boss reiterated how much he valued my independence as a court but hinted how much a short and sharp custodial sentence would be the best for this case. After all madam, we as the courts should send a clear message out there that any form of violence was unacceptable.
Anyone who knows the system may already have correctly deduced that this was no professional advice, it wasn’t a request either! It was a command with a thinly veiled threat of career sabotage.
All rise! The court interpreter announced my entrance into court, and my slight bow that silently said ‘ok people let’s skip this bullshit now’ got everyone seated.
It was no surprise that the first case up for trial was one were the accused was facing a charge of assault with the intention of causing grievous body harm!
As the prosecution opened its case calling the complainant as their first witness, I sat tensely, not really anticipating looking at someone with a broken jaw, misaligned lips and most likely one hell of a swollen face. Surely the trial needn’t have gone ahead within a couple of days, they could have gone ahead and given the poor victim time to recover.
To my amazement, a decent looking man, handsome even, immaculately dressed and walking without the slightest limp took to the stand. Have I just mentioned how handsome he was? It wasn’t too hard to assess his looks as there were no bandages on his face, nor were there any plasters holding his jaw together. As far as I could see, his lips were exactly where they were supposed to be, unless of course he previously had a facial deformation which had miraculously been corrected during the fight.
The accused person turned out to be an eighteen-year-old boy who’d been working in his father’s bar on the night in question. Like reeds in an angry river, he shook so bad he could barely stand in the dock. He really didn’t understand why stopping a bar fight from getting out of hand and throwing the culprits out had landed him in such trouble. He was only doing his job as best as he could and “your worship drunk people are really difficult to manage”, he was sure no one had got seriously hurt.
After all had been said and done, the prosecution having made a field day of severe injuries they could not prove and the accused having presented a defense that could pass as plausible, I gave the prosecutor a questioning look which was replied to by a knowing shrug. I knew then that someone had got to him too, he’d played his part and the ball was now in my court.
I could feel bile rising in my throat, everything about this case made me feel sick in the stomach. I failed to comprehend why grown men in their fifties or sixties would go out of their way to manipulate their positions of power particularly over petty issues like a bar fight! Inflated egos were what it had to be. Prison conditions in Harare are at best punitive, otherwise they’re life threatening. No reasonable person would send the young man in the dock, with no prior convictions, to a place where they’d probably die of ‘natural causes’ or come back a hardened criminal without considering the alternatives.
It was clear that this was a defining moment where I was supposed to prove that I could be ‘relied on’ to sometimes sway the wheels of justice as and when need arose. Being reliable meant a good chance of a flamboyant career in the halo of the boss and the boss’ bosses, where everyone miraculously spends more than what they earn in multiple folds but still have no debts!
Looking at the young man whose name I choose not to remember, knowing that ultimately it was now me or him, I stopped seeing ‘him’ but saw ‘them’. It could have been him, it could have been another person, in the end it was someone and everyone who had and will be denied justice because they did not belong to the right side or know the right people.
I knew what needed to be done. I didn’t take a recess, I knew that the tea room would be buzzing with curious
colleagues and the pressure I was under as it was, was enough. As far as I was concerned it was a simple case that didn’t warrant hours of research and quoting precedence. The court concluded that the prosecution had failed to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt, leaving the court with no option but to acquit the accused person of all charges leveled against him.
Word of my ruling obviously preceded me to the boss’ office, the look on his face said it all. I knew that from that point on wards I would be relegated to the misdemeanor courts. The stack of sudden death dockets which were supposed to be equally distributed among all would definitely rise higher on my desk and I’d increasingly spent more time poring at pictures of dissected dead bodies and doctors’ reports.
As I walked away from the court building that day, I found myself dwelling on a quote I’d randomly memorized at some point “It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.” (Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear).
Across the grain it’d always be for me.
I carried on with my work, being unapologetically a loose cannon for another year until I found another calling…
The boss has risen through the ranks and now holds the highest magisterial position in the country, in charge of all the country’s magistrates…
~theblackrose
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