Prof Michelo Hansungule, Professor of human rights law at the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria has been tasked to head an Election Observer Mission to Zimbabwe during the end of July. The Mission will be dispatched by the Southern Africa Development Community-Lawyers’ Association (SADC-LA), currently running a programme on Governance and Democracy in the SADC region.

The objective of the programme is to contribute towards democratic electoral processes in the SADC region. The organisation has been accredited by the Zimbabwe Elections Commission on the 1st of July 2013 and will deploy 25 lawyers to observer the harmonised elections to be held on the 31st of July 2013.

The SADC Lawyers Association (SADC-LA) is an independent voluntary association made up of Law Societies and Bar Associations of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region. SADC-LA has a mandate to uphold human rights, promote democracy and independence of the judiciary in the SADC region. In pursuing that vision, the organization through this programme of Governance and Democracy intends to build the capacity of lawyers and civil society actors in elections monitoring and observation. Other than Zimbabwe, the organization is also implementing similar activities in Swaziland. Recently SADC trained a pool of 30 regional observers among them lawyers and civil society actors as part of this project.