A former National University of Science and Technology (NUST) student who was arrested for allegedly criticising President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s 2020 State of the Nation Address (SONA) has been acquitted.
Rujeko Hither Mpambwa (24), was arrested in August 2020 and has been been on trial since July 2022.
She was charged with undermining the authority of, or insulting, President Mnangagwa in contravention of section 33 of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act.
She appeared before Kariba Magistrate, Tapiwa Banda, and was represented by Unite Saizi of Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR).
Caren Musiiwa prosecuted.
Allegations were that Mpambwa posted a comment denigrating President Mnangagwa on a WhatsApp group titled Kariba Hard Talk, wherein she reportedly wrote:
He is busy forwarding the Vision 2030 Agenda. He is sick. He should keep quiet about patriotism. He is making us angry.
An aggrieved member of the Kariba Hard Talk WhatsApp group, Samu Mawawo, informed ZRP officers, who arrested Mpambwa.
Police seized her Huawei mobile phone and sent it to Criminal Investigations Department’s National Cyber Forensic Laboratory.
The CIDs extracted her message and compiled an examination report, which was presented in court as an exhibit.
The magistrate, however, cleared Mpambwa of wrongdoing, ruling that the context of her message was not clear.
[The magistrate said the] messages were plucked out from other messages, which were not retrieved from her mobile phone, and as such the context in which they were allegedly sent was unclear.
The magistrate also said Mnangagwa’s SONA did not appear fully on the exhibits produced in court and hence the court could not, therefore, work on speculation when all the alleged offensive words were not retrieved. Said ZLHR:
What purportedly linked Mpambwa to the alleged offence was the name “Emasoni,” and the court could not speculate that the said word refers to the President.