The government took limited steps to punish offending security sector officials and ZANU-PF supporters, but impunity was a problem. Human rights groups reported continued physical and psychological torture by security agents and ZANU-PF supporters. The NGO reported that the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) were responsible for 66 percent of violations, while ZANU-PF supporters were responsible for 25 percent of violations.
Violent clashes between ZANU-PF (known as . "Chipangano") youth groups and political opposition parties continued, especially in urban areas. Security forces arbitrarily arrested and detained individuals, especially political and civil society activists perceived as opponents of the ZANU-PF party. In August, for example, dozens of youths associated with ZANU-PF raided the farm of Victor Matemadanda, secretary of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War.
Respect for Civil Liberties, Including
The government-controlled Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation, the country's only domestic television station, operated one television channel. The law allows the government to monitor all communications in the country, including Internet transmissions, and the government has sometimes restricted access to the Internet. For example, the government has blocked Blackberry Internet services for Blackberrys registered in the country, including encrypted ones.
The constitution and law provide for freedom of association, but the government restricted this right. Although the government did not restrict the formation of political parties or trade unions, security forces and ZANU-PF supporters continued to interfere with their activities. The constitution and law provide for freedom of internal movement, travel abroad, emigration and repatriation, but the government restricted these rights.
The government did not account for the total revenue collected as fines from these roadblocks in the national budget. Despite this discrimination, the government generally cooperated with international agencies and NGOs providing humanitarian assistance. Access to asylum: The country's laws allow for the granting of asylum or refugee status, and the government has established a system to grant asylum.
Freedom of movement: The government maintained a formal encampment policy requiring refugees to live in the Tongogara refugee camp. The government also allowed Rwandan refugees, who lost prima facie refugee status following the implementation of Rwanda's 2013 cut-off clause, to remain in the country.
Freedom to Participate in the Political Process
Participating political parties, including the two MDCs that were part of the coalition government, contested the date in court. Parliament failed to pass laws to improve the fairness of the elections, while certain elements of government failed to implement other electoral laws. Despite a constitutional provision of citizenship, large groups of the population were denied registration as voters because of their foreign ancestry.
Other violations of the election law included a shortened special voter registration period, partisan public statements by senior security force officers, and active police officers running for public office in violation of the law. The credibility and independence of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) was called into question for allegedly being composed mainly of personnel from the pro-ZANU-PF security sector. ZEC failed to provide an electronic copy of the voter register to any of the opposition political parties as required by law, but it did provide a paper copy of the voter list to the MDC-T late on election day.
When the ZEC announced the election results, President Mugabe won with more than 61 percent of the vote and was inaugurated three weeks later. Other issues with the election included restrictions on non-ZANU-PF party candidates, bias in the domestic media in favor of ZANU-PF, denial of permission for some foreign journalists to cover the election, failure of the Registrar General and the ZEC to provide for open inspection of voter rolls, the failure of the courts to settle election issues before the election date, and numerous discrepancies with the electoral register, such as irregular registration patterns between urban and rural areas. In defiance of the law, active members of the police and military openly campaigned and stood for ZANU-PF in the elections.
After the 2013 elections, women held three of the 24 ministerial positions in the cabinet, well below their 52% share of the population as recorded in the 2012 census and well below the equal representation required by the constitution. The ZANU-PF congress allocated one-third of party positions to women and reserved 50 positions for women in the party's 180-member central committee, one of the party's most powerful organizations.
Corruption and Lack of Transparency in Government
In 2015, the ZANU-PF Women's League passed a resolution calling on the party to amend its constitution to accommodate the appointment of a female deputy president, which the ZANU-PF legal affairs department ignored. The government's implementation of redistribution of expropriated white-owned commercial farms often favored the ZANU-PF elite and continued to be absent. High-level ZANU-PF officials selected multiple farms and registered them in the names of family members to avoid them.
The government continued to allow individuals aligned with top officials to seize land not designated for acquisition. There were reports that ZANU-PF officials in government discriminated against, harassed or removed persons perceived to be opposition supporters from the civil service and the military (see section 7.d.). The government has reappointed and demoted officials perceived to be sympathetic to Zimbabwe People First leader Joice Mujuru.
It remained common for the ZANU-PF Minister of Local Government to appoint ZANU-PF supporters to bureaucratic positions in local governments. The Minister of Finance announced that the government intended to reduce the roles of the civil service, but unqualified people employed in the public sector. Despite President Mugabe's public accusations of corruption against senior ZANU-PF members, security officials made few arrests of low-level party members.
The government did not implement its policy requiring officials to disclose interests in transactions that form part of their public mandate. Although the government claimed that the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act was intended to improve public access.
Governmental Attitude Regarding International and
While the law allows access to some public records, it also imposes nominal fees for administrative costs involved in retrieving those records, which many citizens found burdensome. In addition, citizens often faced burdensome and complicated rules to gain access to public buildings where records are kept. The constitution calls for the establishment of a National Peace and Reconciliation Commission to operate for a 10-year period with the aim of ensuring post-conflict justice, healing and reconciliation.
Although the government introduced a National Peace and Reconciliation Commission bill to parliament, civil society organizations and citizens defended its withdrawal, citing concerns about limits placed on the commission's authority.
Discrimination, Societal Abuses, and Trafficking in Persons Women
The constitution's bill of rights, in the section on the rights of women, states that all “laws, customs, traditions and practices which infringe upon the rights of women granted by this constitution are void to the extent of the. Community Development and the Gender Commission - one of the independent commissions established under the constitution. The 2015 SADC Gender Barometer reported that women make up 54 percent of unskilled labor, while men make up 59 percent of the professional workforce.
Most substantive calls were about sexual and physical abuse, usually inflicted by a family member or someone living with the child. The court also struck down a provision of the Marriage Act that allowed girls but not boys to be married at age 16. The National Association of Societies for the Care of the Handicapped (NASCOH) drafted a National Policy on Disabilities in 2009, but the government had not.
According to government statistics, the Shona ethnic group makes up 82 percent of the population, Ndebele 14 percent, whites and Asians less than 1 percent, and other ethnic and racial groups 3 percent. The historical tension between the Shona majority and the Ndebele minority resulted in the marginalization of the Ndebele by the Shona-dominated government. During the 2013 elections, the mainstream MDC-T frequently accused Welshman Ncube of the Movement for Democrats.
The police rarely arrested or charged ZANU-PF supporters with violating minority rights, especially the property rights of the minority white commercial farmers or. The law defines an indigenous Zimbabwean as any person, or the descendant of such a person, who was before the date of the country's independence in 1980. The official goal of the indigenization law was to increase the participation of indigenous citizens in the economy, including at least 51 percent indigenous ownership of all businesses.
For example, Walter Magaya, head of Healing and Deliverance Ministries, continued to host TV and radio shows in which he "healed" members of the LGBTI community.
Worker Rights
At the enterprise level, works councils negotiate collective agreements, which become binding if approved by 50 percent of the workers in the bargaining unit. The police allowed the ZCTU to march in the country's six regional capitals earlier this year. In September, police twice stopped all demonstrations in the Harare Central Police District in response to social movement protests that included union members.
The Labor Amendment Act defines forced labor as "any work or service which a person is obliged to perform against his will under threat of some form of punishment", the first such legal definition in the country. Forced labor in prisons includes "any work required as a result of a judgment or order of a court" as well as what is "reasonably necessary for the sake of hygiene or for the sake of it. The Ministry of Social Affairs in the Ministry of Labor and Welfare is responsible for the enforcement of child labor legislation, but the department lacked the staff and commitment to carry out inspections or other monitoring.
Most of the children involved in mining worked for themselves, a family member or someone in the community. Exposure to hazardous materials, especially mercury, increased in the informal mining sector. Forced labor by children took place in the agricultural, artisanal gold and chromium mining and domestic sectors.
Labor legislation prohibits sexual harassment in the workplace and an employer can be held liable for civil remedies if found to be in breach of it. Occupational health and safety standards were current and appropriate for the main industries in the country.
