Foreign Affairs minister Sibusiso Moyo said there is nothing wrong with the Maintenance of Peace and Order Act (MOPA) which he said is in line with the new Constitution.
Addressing delegates at a recent Global Sharpers Forum in Harare recently, Moyo defended the law, saying the government has done the right thing for the country. He said:
We just plagiarised exactly what is in the 2013 Constitution and we said that is what we are going to put because anything else was going to going to be ultra vires the constitution.
So, a lot of people have been saying ‘it’s (MOPA) too hard’ this and that but the reality of the matter is that it is exactly in terms of the constitution.
MOPA replaced the repressive Public Order and Security Act (POSA), which critics said it was akin to the Rhodesian-era Law and Order Maintenance Act (LOMA) and South African apartheid laws.
However, MOPA is a mere tinkering of POSA as the former retains 20 Clauses word for word, of the 23 that are in the latter.