As Zimbabwe’s justice system continues to impress neighbours and beyond, a four member delegation from Malawi’s judiciary is in the country for a two-week visit to benchmark on the country’s judicial administration.
The team, led by Mrs Edith Chikangwa, the chief administrator of the courts in Malawi, yesterday paid a courtesy call on Chief Justice Luke Malaba at his Harare offices and praised Zimbabwe’s justice delivery system.
Speaking after the closed door meeting, Mrs Chikangwa said they were impressed by the strides that Zimbabwe had made so far in delivering justice and that they were eager to take a leaf from Zimbabwe.
“My judiciary would want to benchmark what the Zimbabwe judiciary is doing. We have heard a lot of stories about how successful the judicial system is here so we would like to learn how they are doing their things so that when we go back home we can also try to implement them.”
Further, she said Zimbabwe’s justice delivery system was something that one can easily relate to especially in terms of the specialisation of the courts. The Judicial Service Commission secretary Mr Walter Chikwana said Zimbabwe developed its home grown judicial administration system, which has become a model in the region, notably within SADC.
“We have a lot of successful stories that we have as judiciary in Zimbabwe in terms of improving access to justice and in the manner we have decentralised both our magistrate courts and our High Court.
“When we started on the first of May 2020 we had some prophets of doom , who never thought that we would be able to completely digitise our courts .
“Those courts are now completely digitised and I can assure you come August 2023 the general division of the High Court is going to be digitised.”
Mr Chikwana attributed the commission’s accomplishments to the generous received and continuing to be received from the Government.
“We have had a lot of support from the Government of Zimbabwe especially through Treasury. Most of our projects are self funded. Most of the things we are doing in the judiciary are not donor funded.
“Yes we are getting cooperation from our colleagues, donors but on things like training. But I tell you most of the projects and the construction of courts we have been doing in this country are wholly funded by the Government of Zimbabwe.
“This is a success that our colleagues in the region and beyond are coming to benchmark and find out how we have done it.”
Herald
