CITIZENS Coalition for Change spokesperson Fadzayi Mahere was yesterday fined US$500 or three months imprisonment for communicating falsehoods prejudicial to the State.
This was despite the fact that in 2021, High Court judge Justice Jester Helana Charewa ruled that “there is no offence called publishing or communicating statements prejudicial to the State under Zimbabwean law”.
Mahere was found guilty of publishing falsehoods in a case involving a woman whose child was erroneously reported to have been struck to death by a baton-wielding Harare police officer while he was enforcing COVID-19 lockdown regulations in 2020.
Police refuted the claim and said the child at the centre of the storm was alive.
Making his ruling, Harare magistrate Taurai Manuwere said: “It is not in dispute that she communicated on her Twitter handle. What is false is that a police officer beat a woman and the baby died. Therefore, the State managed to prove the main and alternative charge that she communicated falsehoods.
“It is true that the tweets did not result in public disorder. Be that as it may, the State did not manage to prove that the publication was meant to incite public violence because there is no evidence to prove that. The State proved that the false statement by the accused was detrimental to the police that they had killed the baby.”
A video of the incident went viral in 2020, with the mother wailing, while holding onto a police officer who had “allegedly assaulted her baby to death”.
The magistrate said Mahere was learned enough as a lawyer to know that accusing the police of killing a toddler without any evidence was an offence.
“Which lawyer would take a video on social media, believe it to be true without verifying? What she did is rumour mongering, she was supposed to verify with the police or the mother before publishing. She did not do so. She was reckless, so her defence of a mistake of fact is not genuine.”
Mahere pleaded for leniency saying she was a first offender.
Prosecutor Sheilla Mupindu said a fine would trivialise the offence, arguing her actions undermined the authority of the police.
She suggested a custodial sentence of three years.