In a country with harsh free speech laws, there is a thin line between a joke about the president and an insult undermining him and many have been trapped in this minefield.
As Mugabe strengthens his 31-year grip on power, the jokes have increased and proportionally, so have the cases of people arraigned for insulting the veteran ruler.
The cases vary from those that have called Mugabe “old” to those that allegedly have called him a liar and to those that accuse him of overseeing the collapse of what was arguably a vibrant economy.
In recent weeks there has been an upsurge of people being arrested for insulting the president, but bizarrely, a prison warden was fired for allegedly insulting the president’s sister.
Joel Ndlovu, a chief superintendent with the Zimbabwe Prison Services (ZPS) was last week fired after a disciplinary hearing, where he had been charged with insulting Sabina Mugabe, the president’s late sister.
Ndlovu, who was based at Khami prison, allegedly described Sabina as a woman of loose morals, who did not deserve to be buried at Heroes Acre.
A security guard is also facing the wrath of the law after he accused Mugabe of presiding over the collapse of the economy, while paying homage to the MDC-T, which the guard claimed had healed the economy.
Another strange case is that of Gift Mafuka, who was convicted for one year after he chided some children for wearing T-shirts of an “old and wrinkled” Mugabe.
- Chamisa under fire over US$120K donation
- Mavhunga puts DeMbare into Chibuku quarterfinals
- Pension funds bet on Cabora Bassa oilfields
- Councils defy govt fire tender directive
Keep Reading
Mafuka appealed against the conviction and the matter is yet to be finalised.
In the initial ruling, two months were suspended from the 12- month sentence, on condition that Mafuka did not commit a similar offence in the next five years, by then Mugabe would be 91.
The most high-profile case, however, should be that of Jameson Timba, a Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office, who was accused of calling Mugabe a “liar” in a press release in the aftermath of the Sadc summit in South Africa that deliberated on Zimbabwe.
Hardliners within Zanu PF, Mugabe’s party, claimed the statements undermined the president and Timba had to be brought to book for disrespecting the president.
He was later released but not before lodging a High Court appeal and spending two nights behind bars.
Law meant to intimidate people, says rights lawyer
Nyanga North legislator, Douglas Mwonzora leads a host of MDC-T officials who have been arraigned before the courts for allegedly insulting Mugabe. Mwonzora allegedly described the president as a “goblin”, who would be forced to flee.
As if that was not enough, Mwonzora was again in the dock for denigrating the octogenarian leader after he allegedly pointed at Mugabe’s portrait and chided “. . .how are you father, how is your health and how is your eye?”
But human rights activists believe that the laws that make it an offence to insult the president are archaic and should be declared unconstitutional.
“Such laws are kept in place to maintain a repressive and closed environment that does not promote freedom of speech and hence tilt the political scale in favour of the incumbent,” Dzimbabwe Chimbga, a programmes officer at the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR), said.
Despite the laws being difficult to prosecute, Chimbga said they served a strategic purpose, as it muzzled criticism particularly when it was directed at the president.
“This is a futile attempt to deny people the opportunity to publicly discuss issues of governance and more specifically issues concerning how the executive is discharging its duties or in any event failing to do so,” he continued.
The rights body said it had referred several cases to the Supreme Court and a number were pending at the constitutional court.
