Zimbabwe January 2007 |
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| High Court sides with Ncube in citizenship case, (New Zimbabwe, 2007-01-26):-High Court ordered the registrar general on Thursday to reinstate the citizenship of a leading newspaper publisher and critic of President Robert Mugabe and issue him a new passport. Trevor Ncube, who publishes two weekly newspapers in Zimbabwe as well as South Africa's Mail and Guardian, was stripped of his citizenship and denied a new passport last year on the grounds that he was a Zambian citizen by descent. Zimbabwean law prohibits dual citizenship. In a ruling on Thursday, Judge Chinembiri Bhunu said there was no legal justification to deny Ncube citizenship or the travel document and ordered Registrar General Tobaiwa Mudede to give Ncube a passport and not to interfere with his use of it. "It is accordingly ordered that (Ncube) is a citizen of Zimbabwe by birth ... the withdrawal or cancellation of his citizenship is unlawful, null, void and of no force or effect," Bhunu said. The ruling came after Ncube's lawyer Stanford Moyo urged the court to restore his client's Zimbabwean citizenship, saying that he was of Zambian ancestry but had never taken out Zambian citizenship. Ncube's passport was seized in 2005 after officials intercepted him at the airport under an unofficial crackdown on travel by Mugabe's leading critics. Justice Bhunu later made a final order for Ncube's passport to be returned, which, legal sources say, effectively ruled Ncube a Zimbabwean. Critics say the moves to confiscate opponents' passports could be a sign of panic in Mugabe's ruling party, which is pushing to extend his 27-year rule to 2010 amid a deepening economic crisis largely blamed on government policies. | |
South African Migration Project (SAMP) - Queen's University - http://www.queensu.ca/samp |