𝗗𝗢 𝗬𝗢𝗨 𝗞𝗡𝗢𝗪 𝗛𝗢𝗪 𝗦𝗢𝗨𝗧𝗛 𝗔𝗙𝗥𝗜𝗖𝗔𝗡 𝗖𝗢𝗨𝗥𝗧𝗦 𝗚𝗢𝗩𝗘𝗥𝗡 𝗦𝗔 𝗔𝗡𝗗 𝗔𝗙𝗥𝗜𝗖𝗔?

South African constititional court judges decide that South Africa police can investigate human rights violations in Zimbabwe.

In South Africa, the President and politicians do not govern, but the courts and unelected judges govern South Africa. In turn, the judges generally endeavour to protect imperialist and apartheid status quo (crimes against humanity), hence they never pushed for punishment of apartheid criminals or remedy of apartheid as the international convention dictates. Additionally, they are also meant to govern Africa, in particular SADC.

For example, a 2014 landmark ruling by the Constitutional Court of South Africa instructs the SA police and National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) to go into Zimbabwe to investigate human rights violations in Zimbabwe and by deduction anywhere in Africa, in order for South Africa to fulfill its Rome Statute/ICC obligations even though Zimbabwe is not a signatory of the statute.

Despite the South African police and NPA arguing that they have no jurisdiction in Zimbabwe, South African judges in the High Court, Supreme Court, and Constitutional Court all ruled that, in line with their Rome Statute obligations, South African police and the NPA have the authority to got into Zimbabwe and to investigate crimes perpetrated by Zimbabwean politicians against the opposition in Zimbabwe, and to arrest perpetrators either in Zimbabwe or when those people enter South Africa.

The irony lies in the Zimbabwean government's lackadaisical approach to opposing this ruling, where they used South Africa lawyers instead of capable Zimbabwean lawyers, to fight this absurd judgement by the South African courts. Recently, we also witnessed the same passiveness by the same government to the extraterritorial decision by South Africa's courts to gag me [Rutendo Matinyarare], an activist and journalist from complaining about GMO food and glyphosate being illegally sold in Zimbabwe without labeling.

The fact remains that the Zimbabwean government’s passiveness to legal decisions made in South Africa, has consistently empowered South African judges to govern Zimbabwe from outside, de facto. It’s unfortunate that most people were so myopic to think that the GMO fight happening in South Africa between Innscor and Rutendo was about Rutendo, without realizing that it was about our sovereignty which has been jeopardized by the gag issued over a Zimbabwean talking about Zimbabwean national security and food.

These court rulings set a dangerous precedent that will lead to severe consequences in future as the right-wing in South Africa continues to consolidate power in tandem with the current recolonization of Africa.

The lack of foresight of our African leaders is why we remain oppressed as a people. We are victims of our own leader’s lack of awareness more than we are victims of imperialism.