By: Kumbirai Mafunda
A Zimbabwean villager has become the latest casualty of the country’s archaic insult laws which criminalises criticism of long time ruler Robert Mugabe.
Authorities in Nyanga, Manicaland province, have set April 29 as the trial date for 46 year-old Ernest Matsapa, who has been charged with criminal nuisance in contravention of Section 46 (2) (v) of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act Chapter 9:23.
If convicted for committing the offence, Matsapa faces imprisonment for a period of six months.
State prosecutors claim that Matsapa, who is employed as a livestock specialist under Mugabe’s ministry of Agriculture, Mechanisation and Irrigation Development, created nuisance when he allegedly distributed an videoclip on WhatsApp, which gave the impression that the nonagenarian leader was increasingly becoming a liability to his family and the country due to his advanced age.
Mugabe celebrated his 92nd birthday in February by hosting a lavish party in Masvingo, a drought-stricken province, an activity which his critics took issue with as being incongruous at a time of starvation ravaging the troubled southern African nation.
Prosecutors charged that the clip, which was allegedly circulated by Matsapa among members of a Whatsapp group titled “Nyanga Free Range” of which he is a member, denigrated the Zanu-PF party leader as someone who is “incapacitated and has become a burden of the majority including his family due to diminishing responsibility”.
The prosecutors have already indicated that at trial they will produce Matsapa’s Samsung mobile phone containing the alleged offensive clip as exhibit to nail him.
The civil servant becomes the latest Zimbabwean to fall foul of the country’s tough insult laws which have resulted in the arrest and prosecution of more than 100 citizens, including allies of opposition MDC-T leader and former Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, among them the party secretary-general Douglas Mwonzora and party Deputy chairperson Morgen Komichi.
Rights groups such as Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights argue that insult laws must be amended or repealed as they infringe on citizens’ constitutional rights such as freedom of expression, while some ruling Zanu-PF loyalists maintain that they should remain in place to stop Zimbabweans from denigrating Mugabe, who has ruled the southern African country since independence from Britain in 1980.-AfricanInd
