HARARE – Opposition politician Job Sikhala, who was convicted on charges of “publishing falsehoods,” has been sentenced to 9 months in prison wholly suspended for five years and further ordered to pay a US$500 fine by Harare magistrate Feresi Chakanyuka.
The sentence was suspended on condition that he does not commit the same offence involving publishing information prejudicial to the state.
Sikhala’s lawyer Harrison Nkomo, however, said he did not agree with Chakanyuka’s and argues that the law his client was charged under did not exist.
Nkomo said: “We disagree with judgement. It has no foundation at law. It’s not sound. This law no longer exists. It’s wrong for a court to convict with a law that no longer exists. That law is dead. How does it resuscitate?”
Sikhala, then MP for Zengeza West, was charged for posting a Facebook message insinuating that a junior police officer struck and killed a baby with a baton stick in central Harare in 2021.
He spent nearly two years in pretrial detention over charges of inciting public violence and was only freed last month after a magistrate gave him to a suspended prison sentence.
Banana republic