What Zimbabwe MPs said about the Constitution Amendment Bill-Part Four

 THE VICE PRESIDENT AND MINISTER OF JUSTICE, LEGAL AND PARLIAMENTARY AFFAIRS (HON. E. MNANGAGWA):  Mr. Chairman, Hon. Member Hon. Mpariwa who first debated, I would want to help her that on the workers, nothing has been taken from them.  The workers are the reason why we went to war so that we protect them.  We are the ones who put the law in place, and you know it as we were together in Cabinet protecting the rights of the people through the ZANU PF Government.  So you should support because it really supports the workers.

The issue here Hon. Mpariwa is that, the Labour Court is only looking at the rights of the workers.  The High Court will touch everything with the inherent jurisdiction but the Labour Court has been given a portion of the judicial system.  That is why we want it to be differentiated so that they are the High Court and lower courts but, the judge who will be in the Labour Court has the same conditions with the judge at the High Court.  The only difference is that, that one at the Labour Court has a limited jurisdiction but the one presiding at the High Court has unlimited jurisdiction.  That is the only difference.

To the colleagues of mine, there is nothing much I can add because they are dealing with perception.  Fortunately, I am dealing with concrete issues and not perceptions.  This is the difference which is there and will continue with concrete issues which we are amending and we are making it express in the same manner like when we passed the Judicial Laws Amendment Bill which we passed here.

In that Bill, we declared that the Electoral Court, the Fiscal Court et cetera, are divisions of the High Court.  It is making it express and we leave no room for doubt.  This is what we are doing – improving so that people understand that we have made an express declaration.  So it is concrete and not perception.  This is what is happening and the rest of the contributions by other colleagues, it is repetition.  I am not used to repetition but I only state facts as they are and are concrete.  If you are in doubt, you continue to refer to the Hansard.  I thank you.

 HON. ADV. CHAMISA:  Hon. Chair, thank you very much.  I would kindly propose to the Hon. Vice President because he did not quite respond to Subsection 2 and I must say, some Members may feel that we are trying to be stubborn.  We really want to try and help ourselves as a people and this is why we make some of these contributions.  We may be wrong but this is why we have this deliberative House – to have a cross pollination of ideas and we must celebrate that.

Subsection 2 of 174, is it not possible for us to then abandon the reference to the salaries not being reduced to the element of them not being differentiated.  It is a proviso where we are saying provided that they shall not be differentiated because once we have done that, it clears the air Hon. Vice President because the reduction has the effect of speaking to the commencement – so you are not going to reduce but you are not addressing issues to do with increments, promotion or other things.

So, let us just have a capping Clause so that at least we are able to make sure that there is no differentiation.  Once we do that, Hon. Vice President, I will definitely make sure that whatever effort that you want me to help you with, I will help you and you will succeed Hon. Vice. President.  I mean in this Parliament.  Thank you very much.

HON. E. MNANGAGWA:  Again Mr. Chairman, I wish to state that in fact there was no need for us to say that the conditions of service are that their salaries will not be affected.  There was no need – it would have been left but to be express, we have said so.  I am not going to deal with speculation that this might arise and this might arise – let it arise and we will deal with it.

Clause 5 put and agreed to.

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