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.