Zimbabwe court scraps convictions of opposition politician

HARARE: A Zimbabwe court quashed Monday the convictions of a prominent former opposition parliamentarian on charges of inciting violence for which he had already spent nearly 20 months in jail.

An outspoken critic of the government, Job Sikhala was arrested in June 2022 during what rights groups have described as a crackdown on civil rights activists and opponents of President Emmerson Mnangagwa.

He spent nearly 20 months in solitary confinement in pre-trial detention before being released on a suspended sentence in January 2024. Judges in the Harare Court said Monday they accepted Sikhala’s appeal and “the appellant’s conviction is quashed”.

“He has been cleared,” his lawyer Harrison Nkomo told reporters. “He has no conviction, he is not facing any charges, so the 595 days he spent in jail went to waste.” Sikhala, 52, said the cases were “political abuse” by Mnangagwa’s ZANU-PF party, which has been in power since independence in 1980.

“I feel abused. I have been in prison for almost two years. These convictions were fake convictions that had no standing at law,” he told reporters. “It was purely political abuse by enemies in the criminal regime in Harare.” The court quashed two allegations against Sikhala.

One was that he called for supporters of the opposition Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) to avenge the gruesome murder in May 2022 of one of its members by a ZANU-PF activist. He was also accused of publishing falsehoods after sharing a video on Facebook alleging that a policeman had struck and killed a baby.