Human rights not a political football

THE new chairperson of the Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission Ms Fungayi Jessie Majome is very clear about just what are human rights, how they have to be defended and expanded and how everyone needs to work to do this.

Her commission has laid down functions within the Constitution.

The writers of the Constitution were keen to see this commission, and the other central commissions, made up of people of standing within the community, people acknowledged to be of competence and independence, and with active politicians needing to take a long break before they could be included.

Ms Majome made the crucial point that observance of human rights was not just the responsibility of Government.

It had to involve everyone because the rights were what makes us human. As has been observed, human rights are one of those things that we must all have otherwise none of us have.

If some people have full rights and the rest do not, then a country does not have human rights. This, as Ms Majome noted, was in many ways the centre of the liberation war, when those denied their rights, the overwhelming majority, fought for them. And at the end of that war and all its suffering the winners still defended the human rights of those they defeated; they just took away the monopoly and made the previous ruling cast equal citizens with everyone else.

This was a good start in the building of a culture where human rights are not just accepted but are respected. As Ms Majome again observed, they are not some sort of alien system imposed by colonialists and former colonialists on Zimbabwe, but something common to almost all cultures and expressing the desires of all people. If anything the colonialists, while maintaining rights for themselves, were hardly imposing them on the rest of the people.

This does not mean our understanding of human rights remains static. Very often, while the general principles are accepted over long periods, the actual details, and how they apply to everyone, need to be updated. For example, in most cultures the right of freedom of religion took a bit of time to become the norm, although these days almost everyone will defend very strongly that right so they can enjoy that right.

In almost all cultures there was an acceptance that women, like men, were created in the image of God, but the application of that fundamental equality of all people was not really practised to the level it should have been and even in this age, when most people give a lot more than just vague lip service to the notion, there is still much that has to be done to turn this fundamental human right into something that all people enjoy.

So one important role of the Zimbabwe

Human Rights Commission is to keep up the pressure that we do more than just accept that there are human rights but that we live up to those rights and implement them fully, that they become so much part of our lives that we all have them, all respect them and all ensure that others, and that includes people we may not like, or people that we may really disagree with, still have those rights.

One area where we sometimes need to think is the way that our law grants full rights to criminals. They may, in the end, lose their right to freedom of movement as they sleep behind bars, but they maintain every other right. The police usually get this right.

They are carefully trained to use no force if possible when arresting someone, and they need reasonable cause to do even that, and if they have to use force then it must be the minimum and they need to justify that in court if necessary.

This is why those effecting a citizen’s arrest and assault an accused, do face criminal charges, since they are breaching the rights of fellow citizens. There are some limits on many rights.

For example you cannot use freedom of speech to suggest killing or harming other people, and freedom of assembly cannot break public health measures or, for that matter, block highways. But the limits have to be the minimum for a democratic society, and in any case when we respect the rights of others we usually understand the limits on the exercise of our own rights, although not on the absolute rights themselves.

Ms Majome was keen on removing human rights from games of political football, having them kicked around the pitch and being used to score points in a political arena, usually with not much evidence. We all need to be involved, regardless of our political beliefs or for that matter our religious beliefs or any other way we define ourselves.

There are other ways of fighting political battles. These are not unimportant, and in fact among our individual human rights are the rights to participate in political debate, stand for councils and Parliament, organise political parties and vote for the people we agree with.

If we think a right is being limited or if we disagree how it is being limited then we can take action, usually by getting the courts to see if a limitation is “reasonable in a democratic society.” Sometimes it is but sometimes it is not, and here Ms Majome’s commission has work on its hands to see just how much a limitation can be cut back and justified.

The commission probably needs to become more active as it continues to convert our rights under the Constitution, law and so many international and African conventions into a living reality for all people. But that is why it is there and Ms Majome seems more than willing and able to take on the important role she has been assigned.