The recent arrest of nine women from Mutasa district in Manicaland on charges of disorderly conduct after they allegedly booed first lady Auxillia Mnangagwa was the worst demonstration of abuse of power that must not go unchallenged.
The women were arrested on April 10 after they allegedly showed their displeasure at the way Mnangagwa was distributing goodies to disadvantaged members of the community.
It is said that the victims were part of a crowd that gathered at Watsomba Business Centre, which was incensed after the president’s wife ordered that leftover items be loaded onto a truck after she had doled out some gifts to a few beneficiaries.
She allegedly identified a section of the crowd that was at the forefront of the protests and ordered security agents to pounce on them.
Some are said to have escaped the dragnet arrests, but the unfortunate nine women were caught by the police and were humiliated by the first lady, who was seething with anger before they were taken to Mutare where they were thrown into police cells.
Police laid charges of disorderly conduct in a public place as defined in section 41(b) of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act.
Prosecutors claimed in court that the women disrupted Mnangagwa’s speech at the event and said their behaviour was “unlawful, abusive and disrespectful to Mnangagwa.”
However, when the absurd event was exposed by this publication in our last edition it was revealed that Mnangagwa had ordered that the charges against the women be dropped.
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President Emmerson Mnanangwa’s spokesperson George Charamba on X said the first lady had ordered that the courts must stop the prosecution of the women, perhaps after feeling embarrassed.
Such an order is problematic because the first lady has no power to order the courts to drop charges against anyone. That is pure abuse of power.
In any case, the women were never supposed to be arrested or charged for any crime. It is disappointing that no one stood up for the rights of those women except for the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, (ZLHR) that represented them in court.
The ZLHR must be commended for standing with the downtrodden. If politicians are allowed to abuse power without being called out like in the first lady’s case, then they will never know when to stop.
The incident must also serve as a reminder that the insult laws in our statutes must be repealed as they are not in tandem with a democracy.
