Brighton Chiseva
MASVINGO – Not to be outdone, lawyers have formed their 4ED organisation named Zimbabwe Lawyers for Economic Development (ZILFED) which held its inaugural meeting at Masvingo Poly last weekend.
In his speech at the inaugural meeting ZILFED Chairperson Governor Pendei said the organisation was formed following to counter some legal voices like the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights which he said were destroying the image of the country.
“The ZILFED is a conglomeration of Zimbabwean Lawyers who seek to deploy their legal expertise to detoxicate and sanitize the negatively framed legal terrain of Zimbabwe. Given that economic development does not take place in a vacuum but does so within a legal framework. It is therefore logically follows that the way legal minds frame the legal landscape of Zimbabwe Influences how the international community views us as a nation.,” said Pendei
For avoidance of doubt as ZILFED, we are not saying that human rights issues should not be red-flagged, we do not condone any all forms of abuse of human rights, however we note the selective framing of legal issues or cases and fronting of political rhetoric by lawyers instead of fair legal analysis articulation of issues to benefit the public with no legal eyes,” said Pendei
He said the idea of having an organisation like ZILFED CAME UP IN 2019 saying then the political landscape had changed from being a Mafia Republic as some people were saying.
“We were concerned that at a time when the country was making frantic efforts to re-engage the world, our own legal experts, under the guise of being Lawyers for Human Rights projected a bleak state of affairs where they claimed that there were gross human rights violations and series of abductions. What we found intriguing is that these learned colleagues only chose to magnify the so-called gross violations of human rights when victims were opposition members, with virtually nothing being said when the ruling party-aligned people equally alleged victimization,” he said
