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view to countering the Constitutional Court judgment which ordered President Mugabe to proclaim an election date and hold harmonised elections by July 31.

Chris Mhike reportedly chaired the meeting.
What was also interesting in the same paper was an article on the opinion and analysis column written by the same Mhike in response to an article written by Professor Jonathan Moyo.

The good thing is that everyone is entitled to his opinion and that is what democracy is all about.
Mhike thinks that anyone who is not a lawyer is not competent to comment on legal issues. Political Science is eclectic meaning it borrows quite a lot from other disciplines which include law, geography, science, psychology, sociology among other disciplines.

Political scientists have contributed extensively to the discipline of law and the University of Zimbabwe law library has quite a number of such books.

Yes, it might be a fact that each discipline has its own esoteric language which differentiates it from other fields of study, but that in itself does not make it a no go area or a preserve for those who have read that field only.

It is, therefore, baseless for Mhike to claim that he knows all just because he is a lawyer.
We have engaged in various legal discourses with lawyers and we have found some of them wanting and of course others quite competent.

We don’t know if Mhike also heard what Professor Lovemore Madhuku said about the Mawarire case.
The Professor, while being interviewed on ZTV by Reuben Barwe brought out some points which were almost the same as those pointed out by Prof Moyo in the said article. Who then is fooling who?

Mhike is also very worried about the language being used in the public media, especially against lawyers, MDC politicians and “other citizens.”

Our point of departure would be simply by defining what media is. Tendai Chari, a renowned scholar in media circles posits that “all media is propaganda.”

Is that not intriguing?
He went further to note that it is easy to see obvious propaganda from “enemies” while veiled propaganda in our favourite media is not easy to unmask or simply taken for granted.

When one reads the Daily News, News Day, the Zimbabwean and other private media it feels more as if one is at an MDC-T political rally.

Mhike doesn’t see that or pretends not to see that at all. It does not surprise us at all and explains why our Lord Jesus Christ said it is easy for one to see a speck in another’s eye while ignoring the log in one’s eye.

How many times has President Mugabe and other Zanu-PF officials been lambasted, derided, ridiculed and given all sorts of horrible names in the private media yet we have not heard Mhike complaining about it?

Does it not boggle the mind that Mhike has the audacity to say, “Prof Moyo & Co are poisoning the Zim society” and yet the so-called independent papers are already in overdrive mudslinging Zanu-PF politicians left, right and centre; why then contemplate that the public media shouldn’t.

Professor Mararike, in one of his journal articles, pointed out that the owners of the media houses are in most cases interested in advancing political agendas.

Newspapers therefore become “vehicles” of promoting such political agendas and those of their friends or particular groups of people.

Arguably, there is nothing like “independent” or “free” media.
As a lawyer, Mhike should know that all media serves particular view points and interests.

Mhike feels belittled and doesn’t hide his contempt for the magistrate who is presiding over the Beatrice Mtetwa case as he says: “Last week I witnessed the humiliation and frustration of fellow lawyers — Mtetwa, Norman Bvekwa, and Admire Rubaya at Rotten Row Magistrates’ Court as these were made to sit and wait for practically an entire day, by a magistrate who arrogantly and stubbornly refused to postpone their case to a more convenient date”.

Is he implying that lawyers are so superior that they should not be subjected to the same treatment as everyone else? He sees his social grouping as being above the rest of us. What cheek!

We earnestly and strongly believe that, no matter your standing in life, you should be subjected to the same treatment as everyone else.

No matter one’s standing in life, does he not also deserve to be called a man just like any other man?

Is Mhike suggesting to us that only lawyers deserve the right to be called men? Frantz Fanon points out that: Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted.

It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalise, ignore and even deny anything that doesn’t fit with the core belief.

There is actually nothing new to what happened to Mhike’s friends. Those who have been at the courts will tell you how frustrating it is to wait for your case to be heard. As a lawyer we thought he knew better.

Mhike also seems to be troubled by the lack of respect lawyers used to traditionally enjoy.
He clearly shows that as a lawyer he yearns for that respect.

While it is quite noble that lawyers should be respected, Mhike should not forget that respect actually comes out of good deeds.

Rangu Nyamurundira has earned himself quite a lot of respect because of his strong stance on the indigenisation and empowerment policies.

The young lawyer has stood his ground in defence of people-centred policies.
Zimbabwe needs patriotic lawyers who can come up with groupings such as Zimbabwe Revolutionary Lawyers or Zimbabwe Lawyers for Economic Rights in a bid to counter the donor funded Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights. What respect if we may ask, do we owe to Mhike, Mtetwa and many of their kind?

A people who are paid to oppose national policies are not worth respecting. Should we be forced to respect people who have no thoughts of their own?

They call themselves defenders of human rights and lawyers for human rights. Whose rights we may ask? If the rights they mean are those of MDC-T activists then let those they have assisted respect them.

Zimbabweans respect Jairos Jiri for his good deeds to the disabled members of society.
Jiri did not have thousands or millions of dollars in his bank account, but with the little that he earned, he managed to take in the physically challenged until society touched by his good works also chipped in to assist.

It took one man called Jiri to change a whole nation’s perception of the disabled. Jiri let us realise that disability is not inability. Mother Theresa is well known for assisting the poor and dying in India.

Respect for Jiri and Mother Theresa was born out of their good deeds. You cannot simply get respect from people merely because you are a lawyer.

Can a staunch Zanu-PF supporter seek legal advice from Mhike’s law firm or from Beatrice Mtetwa given their partisan political affiliations?

Worse still, can that person engage such partisan lawyers in a case where he or she is harassed by MDC supporters?

That person would be a real idiot to put his or her trust in such lawyers.
While it cannot be denied that it is Mhike’s democratic right to belong to a political party of his choice it should not also be denied that such partisanship also distances him from would be clients who might suspect him of being biased or sympathetic to certain groups or individuals in society.

It then becomes very questionable for ordinary people to respect lawyers who are one-sided.
Most Zimbabweans will always remain grateful to Herbert Chitepo and Edison Sithole due to the sacrifices they made during the liberation struggle.

Mhike should also know that people are complaining everyday about poor water supply in most urban areas, but not a single lawyer has been bold enough to challenge the system by taking the council to court.

Our lawyer brother seems more interested in political issues than the welfare of the poor citizens.
Last time, it was just an ordinary man, not a lawyer at all, who managed to challenge Harare City Council over the issue of pot holes.

We know of quite a number of poor Zimbabweans whose residential stands were repossessed by corrupt councillors and their cronies merely because they had not developed the stands within the stipulated time.

These councillors never considered the economic situation obtaining in the country.
We never heard of any lawyer or group of lawyers taking the city council to task over such injustices.
It is as if such evil never happened at all. That is the greatest danger society faces when it has partisan lawyers in its midst.

All we hear from them are calls to defend the political rights of civil society groups and MDC activists. Would we be guilty if we equate Mhike to this group referred to by Steve Biko when he says: “They have been made to feel inferior for so long that for them it is comforting to drink tea, wine or beer with whites who seem to treat them as equals.

“This serves to boost up their own ego to the extent of making them feel slightly superior to those blacks who do not get similar treatment from whites. These are the sort of blacks who are a danger to the black community.’’

We really think they fit quite well in such a group where they fight for foreign rights camouflaged in democratic rhetoric. They speak with a donor-funded mind and what comes out of their mouth is nothing, but praise for the kith and kin of the funder.

They only mention the issue of human rights when they are defending foreign interests.
They openly support the grand children of the very people who brutally dispossessed their ancestors from their God given land.

They turn a blind eye when their own people cry for land, shelter, access to clean water and a share in the country’s resources.

They want to tell us about the universality of human rights before addressing the issues that created the poverty we find ourselves in today. How can they lecture us on property rights when all our possessions were forcefully taken away from our ancestors?

We have to correct our past before we turn to the future. How can we have a future without looking at the past? Should we just forget about the draconian Land Tenure Act which deprived our ancestors of their land? These lawyers have never stood in support of Zimbabwe’s land reclamation.

Bowden B.C Mbanje and Darlington N. Mahuku are lecturers in international relations, and peace and governance with Bindura University of Science Education