Zimbabwe Law MCP

A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server providing full-text search and structured access to Zimbabwean legislation, including the Cyber and Data Protection Act (2021), Postal and Telecommunications Act, AIPPA, Criminal Law Act, Companies Act, and more.

Note: Zimbabwe's Cyber and Data Protection Act (2021) is one of Africa's most comprehensive pieces of legislation in this domain, covering data protection, cybersecurity, e-commerce, and cybercrime in a single act. It established the Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (POTRAZ) as the data protection authority.

Deployment Tier

SMALL -- single tier, bundled database.

Zimbabwe has a relatively small legal corpus compared to larger common-law jurisdictions. All legislation and selected case law fit within a single bundled SQLite database.

Tier	DB Size	Includes	Transport
Bundled (single tier)	~60-100 MB	All Acts of Parliament, Statutory Instruments, selected case law	stdio (npm)

Data Sources

Source	Authority	Method	Update Frequency	License	Coverage
ZimLII	ZimLII / AfricanLII	HTML Scrape	Weekly	Free Access	All Acts of Parliament, Statutory Instruments, selected case law
Parliament of Zimbabwe	Parliament of Zimbabwe	HTML Scrape	On change	Government Public Domain	Bills, enacted Acts, Hansard
Veritas Zimbabwe	Veritas Zimbabwe	HTML Scrape	Weekly	Free Access (Civil Society)	Government Gazette mirrors, legislative analysis

Full provenance metadata: sources.yml

Key Legislation Covered

Act	Identifier	Domain
Cyber and Data Protection Act	Act 5 of 2021	Data protection, cybersecurity, cybercrime, e-commerce
Postal and Telecommunications Act	Chapter 12:05	Telecommunications regulation, POTRAZ authority
Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA)	Act 5 of 2002	Access to information, privacy
Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act	Chapter 9:23	Criminal offences including computer-related crimes
Companies and Other Business Entities Act	Chapter 24:31	Corporate governance, company formation
Interception of Communications Act	Act 6 of 2007	Lawful interception, communications surveillance
Electronic Transactions Act	Act 16 of 2004	Electronic signatures, electronic contracts

Quick Start

Install from npm

npm install -g @ansvar/zimbabwe-law-mcp

Run via npx (no install)

npx @ansvar/zimbabwe-law-mcp

Configure in Claude Desktop

Add to your claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "zimbabwe-law": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@ansvar/zimbabwe-law-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Build from Source

git clone https://github.com/Ansvar-Systems/zimbabwe-law-mcp.git
cd zimbabwe-law-mcp
npm install
npm run build
npm run build:db      # Build the full database
npm start             # Start the server

Tools

Tool	Description
`get_provision`	Retrieve a specific section/article from a Zimbabwean Act by law identifier and article number
`search_legislation`	Full-text search across all Zimbabwean legislation
`list_acts`	List all available Acts of Parliament in the database
`get_act_structure`	Get the table of contents / structure of a specific Act
`get_provision_eu_basis`	Cross-reference a Zimbabwean provision with related EU/international instruments (GDPR, Budapest Convention)

Contract Tests

This MCP includes 12 golden contract tests covering:

Article retrieval (3 tests): CDPA Section 3, CDPA Section 29, Companies Act Section 1
Search (3 tests): personal data, cybercrime, electronic transaction
Citation roundtrip (2 tests): CDPA citation URL, AIPPA citation
Cross-reference (2 tests): GDPR relationship, Budapest Convention relationship
Negative cases (2 tests): non-existent Act, malformed section number

Run contract tests:

npm run test:contract

Drift Detection

Golden hashes track 6 stable upstream provisions to detect silent content changes:

Constitution of Zimbabwe (2013), Section 1
Cyber and Data Protection Act 2021, Section 2 (definitions)
Cyber and Data Protection Act 2021, Section 3 (objects)
AIPPA Section 1
Criminal Law Act Section 1
Postal and Telecommunications Act Section 1

Run drift detection:

npm run drift:detect

Development

npm install          # Install dependencies
npm run build        # Compile TypeScript
npm test             # Run all tests
npm run test:contract  # Run contract tests only
npm run lint         # Lint source code
npm run drift:detect # Check for upstream changes

Security

See SECURITY.md for vulnerability disclosure policy.

Report data errors: Open an issue

License

Apache-2.0 -- see LICENSE.

Built by Ansvar Systems -- Cybersecurity compliance through AI-powered legal intelligence.

zimbabwe-law-mcp

Quick Install