PROMINENT pro-democracy campaigner Namatai Kwekweza has given the Registrar-General (RG) an ultimatum to replace her national identity card.
This is after officials at the Civil Registry Department on October 30, 2024 reportedly refused to replace Kwekweza’s national identity card after telling her that she was on a so-called Stop List.
A Stop List are names of people deprived of particular rights, privileges, or services, or with whom members of an association are forbidden to do business.
She was put on the list as an accused person after she was charged for disorderly conduct in 2020.
Through her lawyers Tinashe Chinopfukutwa and Kelvin Kabaya of Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, who on November 14, 2024, wrote a letter of demand to Registrar-General Henry Machiri protesting the refusal by officials at the Civil Registry Department to replace her ID.
In the letter, Chinopfukutwa and Kabaya told Machiri that the refusal to replace Kwekweza’s national identity card was unlawful and violated her constitutional right.
The lawyers stressed that the activist was entitled to be issued with an ID and that the enjoyment of this right was completely independent of the existence of any pending criminal charges against her.
The human rights lawyers stated that even convicted prisoners were entitled to be issued with national identity cards.
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Furthermore, Chinopfukutwa and Kabaya said the basis upon which Kwekweza was placed on the so-called “Stop List” had since been overtaken by events after she was acquitted.
The human rights lawyers demanded that Machiri should, within 48 hours of receiving their letter, allow Kwekweza to replace her national identity card.
They advised the Registrar-General that his failure to comply with their demand would lead them to instituting legal proceedings against him.
Kwekweza was recently acquitted alongside more than 70 activists after being arrested in June for allegedly planning to peacefully demonstrate during the Southern African Development Community (SADC) heads of State and Government Summit held in August.
Kwekweza was in July removed from a flight from Harare to Victoria Falls by State security agents at Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport alongside activists Robson Chere, Samuel Gwenzi and Vusumuzi Sibanda.
