Laws Will Continue To Be Written In Long, Meandering, Needlessly Complex Sentences, Attorney-General Assures Nation

By The Reporters

HARARE – Speaking on the nature of how the laws of Zimbabwe are drafted, the country’s Attorney-General Virginia Mabhiza gave rock-solid assurances to the country that laws will continue to be written in long, meandering, and needlessly complex sentences that are enormously difficult to comprehend, adding that there is absolutely no reason to simplify them so that they can be understood by all and sundry. 

She said that while there are calls for laws to be written in accessible language, this is not going to be done. 

“Let me just put in on the record here. There is no reason at all on God’s green earth why the laws of the country should be written in digestible language. There is just no need for that. It is our steadfast commitment to keep them extremely difficult to understand. So yes, laws will continue to be written in long-winding sentences that leave you with no clue of what’s actually being talked about,” Mabhiza told journalists at a press conference at Munhumutapa Building in the capital. 

“I have to put an earnest question to citizens. What do you want to understand? We will be deviating from the norm of what statutes are supposed to read like. I will make sure that it will forever be a strenuous exercise to try to understand our laws,” she added. 

Mabhiza further stressed that it should even be hard for lawyers to understand the country’s laws each time they encounter them, and that it is her mission to make sure the courts are locked in endless disputes stemming from difficulties in interpreting the said laws. She also said that by simplifying laws, that would effectively put lawyers, judges, magistrates, and other members of the legal fraternity out of employment. 

At press time, Mabhiza was already instructing staff from the Legislative Drafting Department within the Office of the Attorney-General to put clauses in laws being currently drafted that even they themselves (the drafters) will struggle to draft. The Reporters have it on good authority that she instructed them to make sure that paragraphs should contain a minimum of 20 lines put in a single sentence.