Musa Kika

Husband | Harvard (LLM), Cape Town (PhD), KwaZulu-Natal (LLB) Law | Mandela Rhodes Scholar | Ford Global Fellow | Harvard Kaufman Public Service Fellow | WEF

[Musa Kika @KikaMusa]

We are blessed to have lived in the days of Dr. Alex Magaisa. The greatest Zimbabwean public intellectual of our time. He was a good man; a genuine man. Alex was supposed to see a different Zimbabwe. His life's work was for that Zimbabwe.

[Animu Athiei @animuathiei]

@TimoOlkkonen @KikaMusa @IHRDAfrica Such a small world Amb .@TimoOlkkonen. @IHRDAfrica is a walker of their talk. They are the lead legal team on my #statelessness case @achpr_cadhp &helped secure a landmark decision in my favour albeit a lack of implementation. We shld indeed continue to #standup4humanrights

[Musa Kika @KikaMusa]

Really nice reconnecting Ambassador @TimoOlkkonen. Your love for Africa is strong, and looking forward to the many things we will continue doing together.

@IHRDAfrica

[Timo Olkkonen🇫🇮 🇪🇺🇺🇦 @TimoOlkkonen]

After several years, great to meet @KikaMusa & Brice Dejougoue from @IHRDAfrica .Not only reminiscing of times in Zimbabwe but having informative discussion on human rights& law in the AU and regional economic commissions. The rights-angle in integration should not be forgotten.

[Musa Kika @KikaMusa]

Towards free movement of people in Africa:

Togo becomes sixth African country to grant visa-free entry to all Africans

https://t.co/zQjNbRZ4rG

[Musa Kika @KikaMusa]

@tazmus982 I indeed read your piece Advocate Taz. Kudos for penning your thoughts. Frankly, I started mine about 4 months ahead of his retirement and I dropped the project. But maybe it is time to pick it up.

[Musa Kika @KikaMusa]

Every system has its own defenders. That's it. So, we understand.

[TheNewsHawks @NewsHawksLive]

A RESPONSE TO “LUKE MALABA’S LEGACY AS CHIEF JUSTICE OF ZIMBABWE”
By Advocate Dr Lewis Uriri
The article attributed to the very senior, respected and decorated human rights lawyer and advocate, Ms Beatrice Mtetwa calls for a firm but fair response. Chief Justice Luke Malaba’s legacy cannot be reduced to political disappointment, selective litigation outcomes, or the irritation of those who believe that constitutionalism means that courts must always decide against the State.
Credit is due where credit is due.
His story did not begin at the Constitutional Court.
It began with sacrifice, interruption, discipline and recovery.
Public profiles record that he served as a prosecutor from 1981 to 1984, as a magistrate from 1984 to 1994, then as a High Court judge from 1994 to 2001, a Judge of Appeal from 2001 to 2008, Deputy Chief Justice from 2008 to 2017, and Chief Justice from 2017. He also served for over a decade on the COMESA Court of Justice.
Before that judicial ascent, he had known the cost of nationalist conviction.
His path was not one of colonial comfort. He belonged to that generation of young African intellectuals whose education, liberty and professional progression were disrupted by nationalist politics.
His detention, restriction, political activism, and reported expulsion from the then University of Rhodesia alongside nationalist contemporaries such as the late Witness Mangwende are not incidental footnotes.
They form part of the moral architecture of the man.
That history matters. A young man loses years to the motherland, is detained and restricted, is pushed off the expected academic track, and yet rises again — first through prosecutorial service, then through the magistracy, then through provincial and regional judicial administration, and finally to the highest judicial office in the Republic.
That is not a small life. It is a national life.
His time as prosecutor and magistrate is especially important. A judge who has sat in the magistrates’ court understands the daily face of justice: the unrepresented accused, the rural litigant, the overburdened clerk, the police docket, the bail application, the remand prison, the maintenance dispute, the small civil claim, the practical indignities of distance and delay. His later obsession with decentralisation, court construction, administrative order and electronic case management was therefore not bureaucratic vanity.
It came from lived institutional memory.
As magistrate in Masvingo, magistrate in charge of the province, and later regional magistrate, he saw justice from the ground up.
By the time he entered the superior courts in 1994, he had already been formed by the practical realities of Zimbabwean justice.
That distinguished him from the purely appellate mind. He knew that constitutionalism is not only written in elegant judgments. It is also built in courtrooms, registries, filing systems, provincial stations, disciplined judicial officers, and ordinary people being able to reach a court without ruinous travel costs.
Ms Mtetwa is correct in one respect: Luke Malaba was an outstanding jurist before he became Chief Justice.
But she is wrong to suggest that the jurist disappeared upon his appointment.
His jurisprudence remained marked by rigour, textual discipline, institutional restraint and deep respect for legal finality. His dissent in Mawarire v Mugabe NO & Others remains celebrated because it showed courage and intellectual independence.
But it was not an isolated flash. It was part of a long judicial method.
His judgments across the High Court, Supreme Court and Constitutional Court contributed significantly to Zimbabwean law. He wrote with unusual clarity on jurisdiction, constitutional procedure, criminal justice, labour relations, electoral disputes, separation of powers, finality of litigation and the limits of constitutional adjudication.
His approach was never careless populism. It was structured, disciplined and often austere.

[Musa Kika @KikaMusa]

@JohnsonTunga And I just wrote my truth here. Fair?

[Musa Kika @KikaMusa]

@bbmhlanga They won't say the truth if we do not say it Che Mhlanga.

[Musa Kika @KikaMusa]

A career that ended in disaster. A judiciary that's now part and parcel of the problem. A man, who, together with his mates, has made the practice of law in his country embarrassing. A man who ripped apart constitutional law out of all recognition.

[Nick Mangwana @nickmangwana]

Excerpts from CJ Malaba's biography as read by Deputy Chief Justice, Honourable Elizabeth Gwaunza:

-During the time that he was Judge of Appeal and a Deputy Chief Justice, he was also a Judge of the COMESA Court of Justice for more than a decade (2005-2016).
-Mr Justice Malaba is an accomplished human rights defender who has taken advantage of his judicial posting by delivering judgments that protect the fundamental human rights of the vulnerable including women, children and persons with disabilities amongst others.
-Since his appointment as the Chief Justice, he has led the judiciary and the Judicial Service Commission in taking deliberate steps meant to enhance access to justice for the people of Zimbabwe through the construction of courthouses in various parts of the country, simplifying court rules so that they are easily understood by ordinary persons and increasing the number of judicial officers both in the magistracy and superior courts.
-Under his stewardship, the courts in Zimbabwe are moving towards digitisation through the Integrated Electronic Case Management System (I.E.C.M.S). The first phase of the I.E.C.M.S. was launched on 1 May 2022, at the Constitutional Court, Supreme Court and the Commercial Division of the High Court.
-This July 2025, under his leadership, the Judicial Service Commission launched the I.E.C.M.S. in the magistrates courts. This phase marks the final stage of the digitisation of Zimbabwe's courts.
-Mr Justice Malaba has participated in various training programmes both in the country and the region. He contributed significantly to collaboration in the continental judicial space through Zimbabwe's hosting of the 7th Congress of the Conference of Constitutional Jurisdictions of Africa (CJCA) and the African Electoral Justice Network (AEJN).
-He is the current President of the CJCA, serving from 2024 to 2026.
-Justice Malaba has also established the Judicial Training Institute of Zimbabwe (JTIZ) whose sole mandate is to develop human capital through training of judicial and non-judicial staff of the Judicial Service Commission.

[IHRDA @IHRDAfrica]

“This publication is timely and necessary. We have the decisions, we have the judgements, we have the recommendations, we have the declarations, all in beautifully bound reports collecting dust in air conditioned offices. But victims cannot eat judgements. So the real challenge is, how do we move from decisions on paper to real justice?”

Emmanuel Joof, Chairperson of the National Human Rights Commission of The Gambia, during the launch of the new IHRDA report “Making Human Rights Decision Matter”.

Download the report here:
https://t.co/BAwurssnjb

[IHRDA @IHRDAfrica]

Our Deputy Director, Michael Gyan Nyarko (@likemike0077), has just delivered IHRDA's statement at the 87th Ordinary Session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights (@achpr_cadhp), where we raised concerns over election-related violence, shrinking civic space, arbitrary arrests, and restrictions on freedoms across several African countries.

We also called for stronger accountability mechanisms, faster determination of communications before the Commission, and the withdrawal of the current draft Declaration on Human and Peoples’ Rights Defenders in Africa, which risks undermining rather than protecting defenders.

Read our full statement: https://t.co/WJGrN3brx9

#ACHPR87 #HumanRights #Africa #CivicSpace

[IHRDA @IHRDAfrica]

📢 WE’RE HIRING | Legal Officer (French bilingual)

Join IHRDA’s legal team and help advance human rights across Africa through litigation, advocacy, and engagement with regional human rights mechanisms.

📍 Banjul, The Gambia
🗓 Deadline: 31 May 2026

More info: https://t.co/gRwCtwm0Ru

[Musa Kika @KikaMusa]

https://t.co/m4yEIoUtXl

A relook at the @MYANC and @ZANUPF_Official relationship in light of Cyril Ramaphosa's @PresidencyZA visit to President @edmnangagwa
Also in light of ongoing Afrophobic attacks.

[Musa Kika @KikaMusa]

@Mathuthu Don't these guys have a WhatsApp group? Why are these meetings announced on X?

[Musa Kika @KikaMusa]

Three days ago Reason Wafawarova wrote an article 'The man who would be king - and the one who refuses to disappear'. He said in the piece:

"The other fellow that was meant to be made redundant was finally parked somewhere as a deputy of someone that does not talk to him - some highest-ranking civil servant, I think.

He decided to keep himself busy on Twitter, scolding political opponents with polished English acquired at some London university in the eighties - poking fun at the opposition, allowing social media to reveal the shallowness of someone who had appeared very intelligent over the years, through unchallenged pre-internet newspaper columns."

Do you know who he could have been talking about?

[Musa Kika @KikaMusa]

@SkyNews how did you know the crocodile in Victoria Falls was hungry?

[Sky News @SkyNews]

This is the shocking moment a hungry crocodile sauntered into a restaurant in Zimbabwe.

Rangers had to capture the gatecrasher from the nearby Zambezi River.

[Musa Kika @KikaMusa]

@matigary Haisi idea yaNick na Jamwanda here iyi?

[Musa Kika @KikaMusa]

@DavidColtart The Anti-Corruption Commission itself needs to be investigated for corruption.

https://t.co/kvZTb5uaOd

https://t.co/u1S6BoH6A4

[Musa Kika @KikaMusa]

@zenzele I suspect Jamwanda and Nick.

[Musa Kika @KikaMusa]

@tsunga_arnold It's indeed misinformation and propaganda galoe for State media and State and part propagandists these days.

There is an apparent strategy to overwhelm the public domain with lies and turn lies into facts and truth. We must resist that.

[Musa Kika @KikaMusa]

Look now, President Museveni is getting inspiration from his brother in the South.