Lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa cuts a short figure, but she appears fearless in her work as Zimbabwe's best-known human rights lawyer.
Lawyer Mtetwa denies playing politics but denounces a system considered corrupt to the core, where justice is administered along partisan lines.HARARE - Lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa cuts a short figure, but she appears fearless in her work as Zimbabwe's best-known human rights lawyer and a thorn in the side of an authoritarian government.
"I've never done anything illegal," she said calmly, as if her anti-graft stance and the stern face she puts on every wrongdoing could not anger some people. "I am building a body of cases that will enable us to have a full enquiry into the operations of the judiciary, to ensure it doesn't happen again," she said, referring to a"captured" judiciary, entirely subservient to the executive.
"Regularly, people don't get bail any more unless they are aligned with Zanu-PF," she said, adding during trials,"You would be hard pressed to find a single judicial officer to say... that the case of the state is weak.It is now systematic for all opposition political defendants to appear before the same magistrates and stand no chance of being released on bail on first application.
Ahead of the presidential election, Beatrice Mtetwa is Zimbabwe's best-known human rights lawyer and a thorn in the side of an authoritarian governmentShe expressed the hope that the campaigning would not turn into"a bloodbath".Political repression is now harsher than under Robert Mugabe, the country's strongman for 37 years, she said.
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