Hilary Muza 
There is a common perception among members of the public that lawyers, just like doctors have a notoriety for wanting to be not understood.
For doctors, their inclination to employ incomprehensible medical verbiage is understandable, because not much of their literature is for public consumption.
However, for lawyers, the age old propensity to employ foreign lingo, especially Latin, as well as repetition, bamboozle and tongue-twisting and confusing phrases is unpardonable because the law is there to serve the public and the law must always be readily understood by any ordinary, average literate man.
How many people have been discouraged from reading significant court judgments, or statutes because such documents will be crafted in burdensome, intricate and detailed form? How many individuals have out of interest attempted to acquaint themselves with procedural rules but have been repelled by the enormity of the task of comprehending them?
For many ages, those mandated with drafting legal documents have surprisingly and in perpetuity sustained a culture of making legal documents deliberately less understandable.
The cause for this unfortunate or regrettable habit was not, and is still not at all mysterious.
It is easily traceable to the tendency by lawyers, present and past to be seen as hard, mystical, sophisticated and highly-learned.
For what other reason could it be that compel lawyers to still find themselves in the modern day still clinging to anachronistic Shakespearean English and Latin, other than the need to earn respect and status through confusing innocent members of the public with unnecessary rigmarole, legal pontification and incredible, or immaculately complex drafting?
A perusal of significant statutes like the Interpretation Act, the Prescription Act or the Constitution for that matter will leave a legally lay person thunderstruck with revulsion and confusion.
And yet these documents are for the public, literate or illiterate, lawyer or non-lawyer.
If one is to commit any transgression outlawed by such statutes, the law will still fall on him heavily.
The excuse that one was ignorant of the law will not suffice. Or further, the defence that the statute was intricately drafted to the extent of not being readily understandable by an average literate man will generally not be valid.
A notable exception in this regard is the Consumer Contract Act which provides that a consumer contract may be vitiated if it is proven that it was crafted in a language that was not readily understood by the party challenging its validity.
Other notorious contracts are better illustrated by insurance contracts, security instruments like mortgage bonds, long leases and financial leases.
Otherwise in any other respect it is a Herculean responsibility to attempt to rely on the defence that a legal document was drafted in an obfuscating, or indecipherable language.
As observed above, the law is there to primarily serve the public and the same public can only adhere to the dictates of law if the law is understandable.
It is not only ironic, but cruel and insensitive to impose presumptions like the ridiculous one that states that ignorance of law has no defence when the same law is hidden from the public through publishing it in heavy language.
The essence of communicating is to be understood by the party intended for your utterances. Now, if one couches his language in a tongue that cannot be understood by your listener then what purpose is your utterance serving?
This analogy goes for the legal drafters. Complex drafting is akin to conversing to a Zulu speaker in Shona, because words will merely be blown by the wind without achieving their intended objective.
In other jurisdictions like South Africa, sanity and wisdom have prevailed and legal drafting has revolutionised and taken a reader friendly tone.
Such an applaudable move was commenced through recognising the need to draft the constitution in simple language that any ordinary literate man could understand.
South Africans went a step further and printed their constitution in all their eleven official languages.
This is a policy that need to be imposed on all those mandated with the task of formulating legal documents for the public.
Otherwise if no remedial action is taken, law will continue to be artificially complex, and alienated from the public in whose interest it ironically exists.
Our Constitution, a plethora of pre-independence statutes, and a host of other legal documents like judgments intended for the public remain cocooned in a rigid anachronism to the detriment of the public.
Without any apologies, it is argued here that the unjustifiable, elitist and neo-conservationist tendency to obfuscate law is not only highly-immoral but nonsensical and unlawful.
The language of the law must not be foreign to the ears of those who are there to obey it. By Vote Muza
Muza is a Harare-based legal practitioner. He writes in his personal capacity.
