CHIEF Justice Luke Malaba has admitted that judges sometimes make wrong judgments in the course of their duties but need not be criticised for genuine errors.<\/p>\n
In what appeared to be a public apology to lawyers over \u201cunfavourable\u201d judgments \u2013 though without giving examples \u2013 passed by the bench, CJ Malaba appealed to lawyers to be lenient in criticising judges.<\/p>\n
He was speaking at the recent 20th Sadc Lawyers Association conference held in the resort town of Victoria Falls.<\/p>\n
\u201cI share with you all the emotions that have been brought here. We dream the same, we have a common goal. We tend to focus on other institutions and forget about ourselves.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre we independent, and how far are we independent? These are the questions we must ask ourselves,\u201d the Chief Justice said.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cDon\u2019t say as I sat there and listened to you and made a wrong judgment, I didn\u2019t comply with the rule of law. That\u2019s not the idea. If I made a wrong a judgment, I made a wrong judgment. It doesn\u2019t mean that I disobeyed the rule of law. It simply means that maybe I misinterpreted the law and are you going to blame me and say this is a horrible judge or you are going to assist me next time. Let\u2019s be constructively critical.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lawyers who spoke before Malaba had raised concern around the absence of the rule of law as well as the independence of the judiciary which they argued had been compromised in Zimbabwe.<\/p>\n
CJ Malaba said rule of law goes hand in hand with presence of strong institutions.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe cannot talk of strong institutions when there is no rule of law. A weak and compromised judiciary is unlikely to have rule of law. You can sit there and argue and I can listen to you, but where result is pre-determined, there is no rule of law and it counts to nothing,\u201d said CJ Malaba.<\/p>\n
The country\u2019s top most judge came under attack last year following his ruling in a case in which opposition leader Nelson Chamisa challenged the result of the July 2018 election.<\/p>\n
The Constitutional Court which CJ Malaba heads ruled that Chamisa had failed to provide evidence of rigging to back his claims.<\/p>\n
During his recent address, CJ Malaba also challenged the legal fraternity to adhere to best professional standards.<\/p>\n
Constitutional lawyer professor Lovemore Madhuku said every citizen has a role to play in ensuring existence of rule of law.<\/p>\n
Namibian lawyer Bryan Eisab said non-existence of rule of law should partly be blamed on the Constitution which mostly pretends to give power to the people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
CHIEF Justice Luke Malaba has admitted that judges sometimes make wrong judgments in the course of their duties but need not be criticised for genuine errors. In what appeared to be a public apology to lawyers over \u201cunfavourable\u201d judgments \u2013 though without giving examples \u2013 passed by the bench, CJ Malaba appealed to lawyers to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":12311,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,12],"tags":[542,438,765,585],"class_list":{"0":"post-12310","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-all-news","8":"category-policy","9":"tag-judge","10":"tag-lawyer","11":"tag-malaba","12":"tag-sadc"},"yoast_head":"\n