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Former Judge and human rights defender Sansole dies in car crash
Violet Gonda, SW Radio Africa
June 11, 2009

http://www.swradioafrica.com/news110609/formerjudge110609.htm

Former Judge and human rights defender Washington Sansole died in a car crash in South Africa on Monday. Journalist Peta Thornycroft, who spoke with family members of the 66 year old former judge, said he was travelling through South Africa with his Lesotho wife Bapsi, on their way to a funeral in Lesotho. The couple were driving in different cars when the judge's vehicle was involved in an accident near Bloemfontein. Two of his wife's relatives from Lesotho were believed to have died in the same accident.

Sansole, who was a passenger, was not killed immediately but died later in hospital. Thornycroft said: "It is a terrible shame to lose such a long term struggler for democracy from before independence and after."

"As a journalist, he was one of the very few people I actually trusted. If he gave me information it was true. He was one of those people of extraordinary integrity and maturity and of course that is why he quit the High Court, long before even the MDC came around."

The highly regarded former judge once said about Mugabe: "An accomplished fraud. I was never disappointed by him because I never expected very much."

Sansole was one of the founders of the Forum Party, led by the late Chief Justice Enock Dumbutshena. Thornycroft said Sansole believed the judiciary had been wiped out more or less with the departure of Justice Dumbutshena.

Sansole was a Tonga from Hwange district and was educated at Roma University in Lesotho and later Kings College in London. He returned to Zimbabwe soon after independence and joined the bench, but this didn't last long. Thornycroft said he was affected by the atrocities going on in Matabeleland in the mid 80s and soon left the bench and went into private practice.

He represented writer and political activist Judith Todd's struggle to retain her citizenship after the Mugabe regime changed immigration laws ahead of the 2002 presidential elections. She is the daughter of the late Rhodesian Prime Minister Sir Garfield Todd.

Sansole was also arrested at one point when he was a director of the company which owned The Daily News, which was effectively silenced by the regime.

Thornycroft said: "He had the earliest insights into the rot of ZANU PF that many people think only started in 2000. Of course it didn't, it started almost as they took office. But as the late Willie Musarurwa used to say; 'We all did sunshine journalism in those days'. But Washington Sansole saw it very early on."

She said he would have been a prime candidate to sit on a human rights commission in a new Zimbabwe, if the process was going to be based on merit and wisdom.

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