Why justice in Africa is slow and unfair

IT IS is a little past 11 o’clock in the morning and Courtroom C is silent. The accused, the defence attorney, the state prosecutor and even the judge who is supposed to be trying the case of The State v Innocent Gwekekwe are absent. In fact, almost all of the courts turn out to be empty. A clue to the mystery may lie in the smell of fried chicken wafting along the airy corridors of Harare’s High Court building, which manages to get through less than half of the matters put before it each year, leading to an ever longer backlog of cases.

The wheels of justice may turn slowly in Zimbabwe, but in some other parts of the continent they have almost fallen off. In the Central African Republic (CAR), for instance, UN peacekeepers lament their inability to arrest criminals in the town of Kaga Bandoro because there are no holding cells to hold them, never mind courtrooms or judges to give them a fair trial.