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WE welcome concerns raised by Deputy Chief Justice Luke Malaba as he rapped the laxity of the Attorney-General’s Office on matters of national importance and the national interest. As we reported in yesterday’s issue, Deputy Chief Justice Malaba admonished the Attorney-General’s Office for taking a lackadaisical approach when representing the Government in court cases of national importance and where the national interest will be in the dock.

Presiding over a case in which a Harare woman, Ms Emelda Mhuriro, was contesting the constitutionality of Sections 18 (1) and (3) of the Labour Act, Deputy Chief Justice Malaba — sitting with eight other judges of the Constitutional Court — rapped the AG’s Office for failing to treat matters of public importance with the seriousness they deserve.

We couldn’t agree more with the bench given the increasing number of cases in which the State has lost not on points of law, but wilful disregard of court procedure or sheer incompetence by officials in the AG’s Office which, ironically is supposed to act as chief legal advisor to Government and hence the people.

For those who may have missed the story, a chief law officer in the AG’s Office invited the bench’s censure when she stood up and indicated that her office was not opposed to the striking down of the laws and that she had no submissions to make.

This was inexcusable dereliction of duty given that it the duty of the AG to test the law before a Judge, which is why the AG’s Office is there to argue for the State.

The office is responsible for drafting the law and should naturally defend it when called upon to do so.

This was a throwback to a Mr Happy Magadure who had, two weeks earlier, also said he had no submissions to make when asked by High Court judge Priscillah Chigumba to respond in a matter in which the opposition grouping, National Electoral Reform Agenda, was challenging the legality of Statutory Instrument 101A1 of 2006 that banned demonstrations in and around Harare’s CBD.

This was despite the fact that there were several factors that should have bid the AG’s office to put up a spirited fight to defend the ban given that previous Nera demonstrations had proved to be orgies of violence and looting in which property worth hundreds of thousands of dollars was looted with the fragile economy losing millions of dollars daily from disrupted business.

More so the Nera conveners had made it clear that their demonstrations masked as protests for electoral reform were nothing more than attempts at unseating a lawfully elected government by making Zimbabwe ungovernable.

We hope the AG’s Office stands put on notice, they have a duty to help ensure the law not only serves the people, but also safeguards the national interest, the raison d’être of the State whose laws he swore to upload.