Category: News Feeds

South Africa will be sending a delegation from both the ANC and its government to former Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe’s funeral at the weekend.

ANC secretary general Ace Magashule said President Cyril Ramaphosa, would lead the delegation as both head of state and leader of the party.

The delegation would be made up of ANC leaders, government officials and many other leaders, he said. This was because Mugabe had “played a very important role as a pan-African in South Africa”.

Magashule made the comments on Tuesday morning as he made his way to Zimbabwe for a meeting of some of the continent’s liberation movements.

The ANC has had a long history of working with Mugabe and his political party Zanu-PF, a sister liberation movement, which played a role in South Africa’s own struggle for democracy.

Mugabe died last week at the age of 95 in a Singaporean hospital.

Various African leaders are expected to attend his funeral on Saturday, which is expected to be followed by a burial at Heroes’ Acre on Sunday in Harare.

Mugabe’s remains are also expected to return to Zimbabwe on Wednesday.

“He was a part of us, he had been part of us. He is one of the leaders who brought Zimbabwe to where it is,” said Magashule of the controversial leader who was once celebrated and ended up being criticised for clinging to power for far too long.

Mugabe had been in power from 1980 until 2017, when he was overthrown in a military coup leaves a legacy that over the years evolved from liberation hero to political and economic misrule.

“It’s not only Mugabe but the party he represented that brought the economic freedom to the people of Zimbabwe, he gave them education, people from Zimbabwe are highly educated. He actually ensured they get the land, an issue we are grappling with,” said Magashule.

“Aluta continua for a better Africa, a better South Africa and for a better Zimbabwe. Our people must never lose hope,” said Magashule.

Post published in: Featured

However, the party’s 20th anniversary bash has been moved to Saturday, 28th September 2019 in the wake of Mr. Mugabe’s funeral.

Our 20th anniversary celebrations are meant to be a birthday bash and in the true spirit of ubuntu, even in the village, one does not hold a birthday

party when there is a funeral in the neighbourhood. The cultural deportment is to postpone the celebration and allow the funeral to proceed.

The MDC is a party tooted in the African values. Notwithstanding our legendary differences with Mr. Mugabe; we have no reason to exhibit barbarity by hosting a national festivity during his funeral. We have never glossed over Mr. Mugabe’s transgressions but we will allow his funeral and burial to proceed ahead of our anniversary celebrations. We are a proud African political movement and the decision to defer our 20th birthday bash is in keeping with our African civility.

As we officially commemorate this party formed exactly 20 years ago to the day, we note that it has indeed been a tenuous journey of courage, growth and the people’s victories.

Indeed, 20 is a significant number.

In the bible, we learn that for 20 years Jacob waited to get possession of his wives and property, and to be freed from the control of Laban his father-in-law. For 20 years the children of Israel waited to be freed of Jabin, the king of Canaan who oppressed them.

Therefore the number 20 is about spiritual progression and karma, reaping what is sown.

Zimbabweans were brutalized in the course of our journey, some were raped while others were callously murdered and paid the ultimate price.

Today, we remember them.

Happy birthday, MDC.

[email protected]: Celebrating Courage, Growth and the People’s Victories.

Luke Tamborinyoka
MDC Deputy National Spokesperson

A loaf of bread now costs Z$9.45 (81 U.S. cents), compared with Z$6.80 before, Dennis Wallah, president of the National Bakers Association of Zimbabwe, said in by phone Tuesday from the capital, Harare. The state-run Grain Millers Association of Zimbabwe on Monday hiked wheat prices to Z$2,200 from Z$1,600.

Other input costs are also increasing, Wallah said.

“Everything else in terms of the cost of production has been going up; fuel and electricity,” he said. “The amount of diesel we are using has also gone up and this contributes to the cost of a loaf.”

The grave of Sarah Francesca “Sally” Mugabe, the first wife of Robert Mugabe is seen next to two un-occupied graves at the National Heroes Acre in Harare, Zimbabwe September 10, 2019. REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko

President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government wants Mugabe, who led Zimbabwe from independence in 1980 until the November 2017 coup that ousted him, buried at a national monument to heroes of the liberation war against the white minority Rhodesian regime.

But some of Mugabe’s relatives have pushed back against that plan. They share Mugabe’s bitterness at the way former allies including Mnangagwa conspired to topple him and want him buried in his home village.

Mnangagwa has taken the threat to snub a burial at National Heroes Acre sufficiently seriously that he has dispatched a delegation to Singapore, where Mugabe died in a hospital on Friday, to negotiate with the family, government sources said.

The body is expected to arrive in Zimbabwe on Wednesday, adding time pressure to Mnangagwa, who is under fire over an economic crisis and clampdown on dissent that has drawn parallels with the worst excesses of the Mugabe era.

Both men have blamed Western sanctions and accused the United States and Britain of driving opposition protests.

“Mugabe has always been a controversial figure, in life as it is now in death,” said Eldred Masunungure, a politics professor at the University of Zimbabwe. “If the founding father of Zimbabwe wasn’t buried at National Heroes Acre, it would set a very bad precedent and tarnish the image of the head of state.”

In public, senior ZANU-PF officials express confidence that Mugabe will be buried at the monument on Sunday, after a state funeral in a sports stadium a day earlier. In private they say the feud with Mugabe’s family could have been handled better.

One factor that could help Mnangagwa’s delegation, which is led by Vice President Kembo Mohadi, is that Mugabe’s family is divided over where the former president should be laid to rest.

Leo Mugabe, Mugabe’s nephew, is leading a group of relatives who want the former president to buried in his home village of Kutama, some 85 km (52 miles) from Harare, two relatives who have attended planning meetings for Mugabe’s burial said.

That group is also backed by some members of the faction within ZANU-PF that is closely aligned with Mugabe’s wife Grace and wants to get back at Mnangagwa.

Other family members, including Mike Bimha, who is from Grace’s side of the family, think it would be best to mend ties with Mnangagwa by burying Mugabe at National Heroes Acre, the relatives said.

On Tuesday, a tour guide at the monument said he was sure Mugabe would be buried there. A place has been left next to his first wife Sally’s grave within the grandiose structure, which North Korean architects helped design soon after independence.

DIVIDED LAND

Mugabe left behind an economy wrecked by hyperinflation, dollarization and deeply entrenched corruption, and a raging political rivalry between the country’s two largest political parties, ZANU-PF and the opposition MDC.

But many Zimbabweans also remember Mugabe as their country’s liberator from white minority rule and for broadening people’s access to education and land.

Mnangagwa, Mugabe’s former deputy whose power base mainly lies in the military and security sectors, has tried to associate himself with the successes of the Mugabe era and distance himself from his ruinous economic legacy.

He used his powers as president to confer national hero status – Zimbabwe’s highest honour – on Mugabe within hours of his death, making him eligible to be buried at National Heroes Acre, which sits atop a ridge overlooking Harare.

Mugabe wielded those same powers to bestow or deny that privilege to dozens of his former comrades, so it would be highly incongruous for his family to refuse to bury him there.

The influential war veterans, who broke with Mugabe in 2016 and played a key role in bringing Mnangagwa to power, think it would be an affront to the liberation movement if Mugabe is not buried at the shrine.

“If Mugabe identifies with the sacrifices of the Zimbabwean people for whom he was president, he should go there,” chairman of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans’ Association Chris Mutsvangwa told Reuters.

‘TROUBLED WATERS’

Mnangagwa’s government has not yet released an official programme for Mugabe’s burial.

But in a memo sent to embassies in Harare on Sunday it encouraged foreign heads of state to leave immediately after the funeral service wraps up on Saturday.

Ibbo Mandaza, a political analyst who is writing a biography of Mugabe, said Mnangagwa was trying to avoid the possibility of a situation where heads of state would attend a burial service in Mugabe’s home district to which he was not invited.

“That is the dilemma Mnangagwa faces, he can’t be sleeping well,” Mandaza said.

A senior ZANU-PF politburo member, who requested anonymity to speak freely, said there were lessons to be learned.

“Probably President Mnangagwa should have persuaded and cajoled comrade Mugabe’s family more to avoid this dispute spilling into the public and embarrassing him and the party,” the politburo member said. Mnangagwa’s spokesman George Charamba could not be reached for comment.

Yet analysts are not expecting the country’s opposition parties to be able to capitalise on the row, noting that cracks in the ruling party had opened and closed again previously.

If Mnangagwa persuades Mugabe’s family to bury him at National Heroes Acre, he will be able to use the occasion to cement his position as the country’s pre-eminent politician, politics professor Masunungure said.

“If Mnangagwa plays his cards well the departure of Mugabe is likely to consolidate his control.”

Post published in: Featured

Latex gloves serve as urine bags, operating rooms lack light bulbs and patients are often required to refuel their own ambulances, medics say.

Mugabe, who died last week in Singapore at age 95, may have swept to power as a liberation hero, but his rule was marked by economic collapse that left his people scrambling to survive.

Zimbabwean doctors note the symbolism of Mugabe seeking treatment 8,000 kilometres (5,000 miles) from home in Singapore’s gleaming Gleneagles clinic, where the cheapest suite costs around US$850 (770 euros) a day.

“It is very symbolic that the former president who presided over all the system for three decades can’t trust the health system,” said Edgar Munatsi, a doctor at Chitungwiza, 30 kms (18 miles) from the capital Harare.

“It says a lot about the current state of our health system.”

Mugabe’s death has left many debating the legacy of a man who ended white minority rule and was initially lauded for advances in public health and education.

In his nearly four-decade rule, Mugabe later brutally repressed opponents and oversaw a catastrophic mismanagement of economy that led to hyper-inflation, food shortages and misery.

Mugabe was not alone in seeking overseas care. Current Vice President Constantino Chiwenga is away for several weeks of treatment in China.

It is not hard to see why.

In Chitungwiza hospital, a glowing sign promising “Quality Health” welcomes patients, but conditions inside say otherwise: Operations are often cancelled for lack of anaesthetic, Munatsi says.

The hospital recently issued an internal memo warning its poorly-paid staff against “eating food made for patients.”

– Two-decade crisis –

The situation is equally dramatic in paediatrics at Harare Central Hospital, one of Zimbabwe’s top clinics. Cleaning is done only twice a week, for lack of staff and detergents, doctors told AFP.

The operations are often postponed for lack of running water and nursing staff, in a country mired for two decades in economic crisis.

“In theatre, we have linen full of blood and faeces and you can’t do the laundry,” said one doctor.

He requested anonymity, like many of his colleagues, for fear of reprisals from President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government.

Only one of three paediatric operating rooms at the central hospital is working.

“We have a four-year waiting list for inguinal hernias, the most common condition in children,” says one of the specialists.

Without treatment, this hernia can cause male infertility.

Drug shortages, obsolete equipment and lack of staff: the mix is sometimes deadly.

“It is heart-breaking when you lose patients who are not supposed to die under normal circumstances,” Munatsi said.

– ‘Pathetic’ –

Since the early 1990s, the public health system has steadily deteriorated, whereas before, people came from overseas to be treated in Zimbabwe, recalls one senior doctor.

That is a legacy of the Mugabe years as the country was tipped into endless economic crisis — three-digit inflation, currency devaluations, and shortages of commodities.

In hospitals, patients and loved ones who experience the situation daily, are resigned.

“It’s pathetic,” says Saratiel Marandani, a 49-year-old street vendor who had to buy a dressing for his mother.

Given her age, she should receive free health care. But the reality is starkly different.

“Only the consultations are free (…) if you need paracetamol, you need to buy it yourself.”

His mother will have to do without the ultrasound she needs. At 1,000 Zimbabwean dollars or 100 euros, it’s beyond his reach.

Doctors say they sometimes have to pay out of their own pocket for patients’ medication, or even just their bus ticket home.

At Parirenyatwa Hospital in Harare, Lindiwe Banda lays prostrate on her bed. A diabetic, she was given the green light to go home. But on condition she paid her bill.

“But I do not even have five Zimbabwean dollars (less than one euro) to pay for the transport,” she said in tears.

“I can’t reach my relatives. I think they have dumped me. They don’t have money, but they should show some love”.

If hospitals and patients are penniless, doctors too cannot escape Zimbabwe’s ruin.

Medics have just begun their latest protest to demand a pay rise after salaries lost 15 times their value in a few months and consumer prices spiralled out of control.

“We are incapacitated,” says Peter Magombeyi, a doctor whose salary is the equivalent of 115 euros a month — a pittance that requires him to do odd jobs to get by.

“We are very aware” of the problems, says Prosper Chonzi, the director of health services in Harare.

“The health system reflects the economy of the country.”

The legal system is predicated on a hermetically sealed simulacrum of reality. Jurors don’t see the whole picture, but what lawyers and judges tell them are the “facts.” Within this carefully constructed world, parties play by certain rules about what can and cannot end up on the record in a bid to ensure that the jurors only know what they’re supposed to.

The court of public opinion, on the other hand, doesn’t behave by these rules, something Alabama Law School doesn’t seem to understand.

Earlier this year, Alabama gave up over $20 million from attorney Hugh Culverhouse Jr., for whom the school was briefly named, in a spat that might have stemmed from the state government’s commitment to unconstitutional stunt legislation but probably had more to do with Culverhouse hoping the school would use his money to build a better law school instead of… whatever it was doing with it. Culverhouse called on students to boycott the school and the school released a series of emails that they seemed to think would make Culverhouse look bad but really just made them look dumb.

Now, with the money refunded, the name stripped off, and everything settled, the parties released a joint statement announcing that they agree to disagree about the future of the school:

All other statements made by either party regarding the decision to return Hugh Culverhouse Jr.’s donations, or the removal of Hugh Culverhouse Jr.’s name from The University of Alabama School of Law are hereby withdrawn.

That’s not how this works! There’s no court reporter striking comments from the record — this all happened! Right in front of us! It’s perfectly fine to say we’ve come to an agreement and this is now our official line, but there are no permanent take-backsies here in the real world.

Forget What We Said: Hugh Culverhouse Jr., University of Alabama Settle Feud [Daily Business Review]

Donor Tells Students Not To Go To Law School Bearing His Name
Alabama Releases Emails Proving Law School Donor Split Had Nothing To Do With Abortion… And Yet Somehow Make Alabama Look Worse
Alabama Law School Gives Up Over $20 Million To Own The Libs

Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

Recently, ATL spoke with Carol Jo Lechtenberg, Sr. Director, Westlaw Product Management about the release of Westlaw Edge Quick Check, an AI-based work product review and analysis tool available to all Westlaw Edge users. Westlaw Edge Quick Check allows attorneys to quickly and securely review motions and briefs to instill full confidence in the results of their research.

Stephanie Wilkins: What customer problems was Quick Check designed to solve?

Carol Jo Lechtenberg: At Thomson Reuters, we are constantly talking to customers to get a better understanding of their pain points and how we might be able to use AI and innovative technology to solve some of those issues.  One thing we heard repeatedly from attorneys and legal research professionals was that it’s hard to know when they’re “done” researching and they’re never really sure if they’ve found everything there was to find.  

We also learned that every legal researcher has their own methodology.  No two researchers, let alone, legal research sessions are alike. And no one has time to employ every single, possible legal research method. Time and resources are always at a premium for attorneys and often knowing when they’re done is a matter of the clock telling them they’re done because they are frankly, just out of time.

Armed with that knowledge and my team’s own experiences of conducting legal research, since we are all attorneys ourselves, we believed there was a way to use AI and machine learning to find resources that attorneys and legal research professionals might miss using traditional research methods.  With Quick Check, we employ all the research methods that expert legal researchers do, but we also have the ability to go beyond traditional methods to find highly relevant resources for the legal issues presented in the attorney’s brief or memo.

We also knew that because time is at such a premium for attorneys, we needed to make Quick Check quick and efficient to use.  Thus, we built in several efficiencies such as:

• Organizing recommendations by document headings
• Providing case outcomes, related cases cited in the document for context and relevant snippets of text
• Providing recommendation tags and previous user interaction icons and filtering so attorneys can quickly determine the relevance of recommendations for their particular issues

Stephanie Wilkins: What makes Quick Check unique among the landscape of document analysis tools?

Carol Jo Lechtenberg: Quick Check has many key advantages among the landscape of document analysis tools.  First, the Quick Check algorithms leverage proprietary assets from Thomson Reuters, such as the Key Number System and KeyCite, so Quick Check can quickly and easily find highly relevant resources for the legal researcher.

Quick Check is also integrated into Westlaw Edge, which provides many benefits to the user.  First, since it’s a part of the Westlaw Edge subscription, there is no additional cost beyond the subscription to use it.  Second, it provides easy access from the Quick Check report to explore new cases and concepts within Westlaw Edge and use exclusive functionality, such as the KeyCite Overruling Risk warning, which notifies researchers when a case has been implicitly overruled by another.  And since researchers will be conducting most, if not all, of their initial legal research on Westlaw Edge, the ability to filter already viewed research in the Quick Check report is highly beneficial and efficient. When attorneys have already done hours of research on a brief in Westlaw Edge, the ability for them to either remove or focus in on what  they’ve already considered with a single click is a huge timesaver!

And finally, Quick Check provides an extensive amount of context while asking nothing of the researcher.  All the researcher needs to do is upload the brief or memo and Quick Check does the rest. Quick Check organizes a reasonable number of highly relevant recommendations by document headings, so it is very easy for the research to focus on what’s most important to them and ignore what’s not.  The researcher will not be overwhelmed with thousands of unorganized cases to wade through. Quick Check also provides case outcomes, and not for the case as a whole, but for the specific issue for which the recommendation is provided. This is because our customers told us that it’s incredibly important to have cases that are on-point for the law and the facts, but if the court didn’t hold favorably for their client, they don’t want to cite that case.  Case outcomes help them make that determination quickly. And Quick Check provides relevant snippet text, so the researcher can quickly determine relevancy of the recommendation. The beauty of these snippets is that relevant portions are generated solely based on the analysis of the uploaded document. No search query or additional input by the legal researcher required.

Stephanie Wilkins: Can you share how the AI is working behind the scenes to go beyond traditional research methods? 

Carol Jo Lechtenberg: Let me start by saying, it is never our objective to replace attorneys.  Rather, our goal is always to make legal research faster and more effective, so attorneys can focus on the things that only attorneys and humans can do.  

The key to any good AI is having 3 main components: domain expertise, AI expertise and good data.  At Thomson Reuters, we’re fortunate to have all three — attorneys with years of legal research and writing expertise, research scientists with extensive expertise in AI and machine learning, and expansive, high-quality data.

The process begins by analyzing the document that is uploaded into Quick Check.  That includes segmenting the document, extracting relevant language and citations from each segment and then using that relevant language and those citation relationships to expand the analysis with related terminology, topics and citations.  There are many algorithms built into Quick Check, each with a unique purpose, but aimed at the common goal of providing highly relevant recommendations, not previously cited in the document.

AI and machine learning, by its very nature, has the ability to find resources in ways we understand, but also in ways that we do not.  The machine is trained by telling it the data it can use to determine recommendations and the resources it can use to figure them out. On the flip side, it is told what is a good recommendation and what is a bad recommendation.  Over time, and tens of thousands of instances of good recommendations and bad recommendations, the machine learns what is good and bad and can find those recommendations on its own.

And since the human process is very linear — run a search, click into a case, click on a key number, click into another case, go back, rinse, and repeat — it is far more time-consuming than what Quick Check can do by running all these processes in parallel.  So not only does Quick Check provide resources that an attorney might miss with traditional research, it will find them in far less time.

Stephanie Wilkins: Harnessing innovative legal tech is one avenue attorneys are taking to gain an edge. How does Quick Check help with that? 

Carol Jo Lechtenberg: Quick Check is one of the most innovative legal technology capabilities on the market today.  Firms are always trying to figure out the best, most efficient ways to stay on top of their game.  As I mentioned earlier, time and resources are always at a premium, so if they can use an AI capability like Quick Check, in which pieces of the legal research process are automated for them, they gain the advantage of being able to spend more time on the parts of their job that only a human can do.  Plus, Quick Check goes above and beyond what attorneys can do with traditional research, so they have the added advantage and confidence that they haven’t missed important resources and arguments for their clients.

Stephanie Wilkins: You’ve obviously done a lot of customer research throughout the development of this. What feedback did you hear most often, and were you able to incorporate it into development?

Carol Jo Lechtenberg: Not to sound like a broken record, but what we heard most often was that attorneys weren’t always sure when they were done researching. They often had the fear that they were missing something, and they didn’t want just another long list of search results to sort through. Whatever capability we built needed to be quick and efficient for them to use.  We were able to address all these issues with Quick Check by providing recommendations that the attorney may have missed in previous research. And if the recommendations are resources that the attorney previously saw during their research, we quickly and easily point it out with the previous user interaction icons. We also make sure that the recommendations in Quick Check are highly relevant and contain a significant amount of context so the attorney can immediately determine whether a recommendation will be helpful to them.  Quick Check allows attorneys to do just that — a quick check of their work or that of their opponents.

Stephanie Wilkins: It was recently announced that Thomson Reuters is partnering with Crowell & Moring to co-develop the future of Quick Check. How important is it to align with customers for development?

Carol Jo Lechtenberg: Aligning with customers for product development is critical for the delivery of greatness.  We could design many things based on what is doable or “cool,” but if it doesn’t have true usefulness or value for our customers, there is no point.  Working with our customers, who are in the trenches every single day, feeling the pain that comes with the tools they’re currently using or how they deal with their clients is critical for us knowing the right things on which to focus.  Once we have a good sense of the pain points and what might be helpful to alleviate the pain, co-development with customers is incredibly important because they are the people who will actually use the product. It is very easy for us to design a product, where the location of every link and button makes perfect sense to us, but again — if it isn’t intuitive for our customers, there’s no point in designing it.  By aligning with our customers, we have first-person feedback about what works, what doesn’t and WHY. It is that dialogue that gets us to a point where the capabilities we create are not only beautiful and revolutionary, but incredibly useful too.

Learn more about Quick Check 

You can also upload your brief with a free trial of Quick Check on Westlaw Edge.

The $100 million gender discrimination case against Morrison & Foerster is still marching forward, and in the latest scuffle the parties are clashing over discovery. As you may recall, a total of seven plaintiffs have come forward alleging there’s a “mommy track” at the firm that they were placed on after they took maternity leave, and the firm is fighting back against the allegations.

According to reporting by Law.com, MoFo is seeking discovery from the current employers of one of the plaintiffs — Jane Doe 4. MoFo has already tried, and failed, to bring sanctions against this plaintiff. The firm argued Doe 4 had signed a release of all claims against the firm when she negotiated a severance package from the firm. But the court found plaintiffs had sufficiently pleaded Doe 4 signed the agreement under economic duress since she was eight months pregnant when she was fired from the firm. Now the Biglaw giant says it needs discovery from her current law firm to “probe whether her performance is also viewed as subpar at her current law firm” and that Doe 4’s retaliation claim “put her job applications directly at issue.”

The plaintiffs… do not agree with that position. Deborah Marcuse, partner at Stanford Heisler representing Doe 4, wrote in a letter brief to the magistrate judge:

“[A] plaintiff does not expose her current job record to carte blanche scrutiny merely by filing suit against her prior employer.”

“Nothing here warrants forcing Jane Doe 4’s current employer into this litigation as an unwilling participant with tangible discovery burdens,” Marcuse wrote. “MoFo should not be able to launch such a damaging assault on Plaintiff’s job security and career prospects, and fire off a warning to similarly-situated employees, on such a slender reed.”

As always, we’ll be following this case closely.

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).