Tino Chinyoka on Nehanda Radio

HARARE - In a scathing rebuke, High Court judge Justice Joseph Mafusire has dismissed a recusal application brought against him by Petina Gappah, a defendant in a defamation lawsuit filed by opposition politician Fadzayi Mahere.

HARARE - Prominent lawyer Tinomudaishe Chinyoka has dragged the Zimbabwe Newspapers Limited company (Zimpapers) and its reporter Prosper Dembedza to court claiming US$100 000 in damages following the publication of a story by The Herald newspaper he views as malicious and defamatory.

Tinomudaishe Chinyoka: "One of the most liberating things in life is being able to express opinions freely because you believe in them, not because they are popular. Just because many people think a thing is truly what they say it is does not make them right. It was Marcus Aurelius that said “The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.”

By Tinomudaishe Chinyoka Irony. I remember well the first time that I learnt this word, it was in Mr Mtande’s class, Form 3, Chegato High School 19 Gochanhembe, as we started delving into my very first Shakespeare: Macbeth. That was of course the expulsion later in the year, for offences in respect of which I was completely innocent, naturally, but that really is a non-story for another day. Back to Irony. It took weeks for me to understand what it fully meant, what with the handicap of having arrived for Form 1 studies still unable to string together a full English sentence that was not either read from a book or “We are very well thank you and how are you”. Those that do not know where this sentence is from, I honestly cannot help you: because the irony is that any explanation would confound understanding. You needed to have been there. But, understood the meaning of irony I eventually did, and now, Eleventeen years later, I see irony everywhere. The irony is that we are the country with entrepreneurs in the solar generation industry buying the latest model cars daily from the proceeds of solar generation projects? The irony is that we even export coal and its products, and we are talking about selling water to other countries.

Tinomudaishe Chinyoka: "It is not normally everyday that a simple question leads to a teaching moment, but when you have students it must. As was the case today. Mine was: Is 10 years jail for robbery where only $30 was taken fair? Having seen news reports and some limited social media comments on the recent robbery case in Plumtree, I was not surprised when one of my students asked me a version of this question. I say a version because the question I got was “if it fair to sentence someone to 10 years for stealing $30?”