COURT WATCH 11/2014
[10th July 2014]
Correction of Omission from List of Current Supreme Court Judges
in Court Watch 10/2014
Apologies to Justice Antonia Guvava
Court Watch 10/2014 dated 8th July supplemented information about the forthcoming interviews of candidates for appointment to the Supreme Court with a paragraph headed The Gender Factor which included a list of current Supreme Court judges and commented on gender balance in the court.
The list omitted the name of Justice Antonia Guvava, who was appointed to the court in July 2013. Veritas apologises to Justice Guvava for this error.
Below we set out a corrected version of the paragraph, with Justice Guvava’s name included in the list of judges and the figures adjusted to show a Supreme Court membership of ten, five of whom are women, and a proposed increase to thirteen judges in all.
The comment on the scope for appointment of one or more women remains unchanged.
The Gender Factor
One of the national objectives stated in the Constitution is full gender balance in Zimbabwean society in general; one of the elements of gender balance is equal representation of both genders in all institutions and agencies of government at every level, including judicial institutions such as the Supreme Court [Constitution, Chapter 2, section 17]. Both the JSC and the President must be guided by this objective and have regard to it when considering these appointments; “guidance” and “regard” are the words used in the Constitution [section 8].
The Supreme Court currently has ten judges, five of them women:
- Hon Godfrey Chidyausiku, Chief Justice
- Hon Luke Malaba, Deputy Chief Justice
- Hon Vernanda Ziyambi
- Hon Elizabeth Gwaunza
- Hon Paddington Garwe
- Hon Rita Makarau [currently seconded to the Judicial Service Commission as full-time Acting Secretary]
- Hon Anne-Marie Gowora
- Hon Ben Hlatshwayo
- Hon Bharat Patel
- Hon Antonia Guvava
As the present appointment exercise aims at increasing the total Supreme Court membership to thirteen, there is scope for the appointment of one or more additional women to the court.
Comment: The JSC itself is not a model of gender balance. Of its current ten members only two are women.
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