Tanaka Ryan Ziso, a final-year Civil and Water Engineering student at NUST, is going to spend the Easter holidays behind bars after he was dragged to court on Thursday.
According to The Chronicle, Tanaka Ziso appeared before Bulawayo Magistrate Maxwell Ncube to answer for charges of causing offence to persons of a particular race. He was remanded in custody until 2 April 2024.
Social media has been set ablaze after a 24-year-old National University of Science and Technology (NUST) student was remanded in police custody over hateful tribal tweets he made against the Ndebele people.
On March 13, 2024, Tanaka Ryan Ziso, who uses the handle ‘The Royal Priest of Chitungwiza’ (@iamryantanaka) in X, stirred up controversy by posting a demeaning and hateful tribal message directed towards the Ndebele people.
“The way MaNdevere claim they’re not Zimbabweans is top tier man😂, woenda kuSouth Africa vokuramba, wopiswa ikoko futi.
I wish I could live with those kind of brains, no real thinking, no straining your brains. Just an idiot saying Vele 25 times a day. Freestyle kinda life😭,” reads the tweet he posted.
His post triggered a firestorm on social media as people found his tweet quite offensive and insulting.
Riding on the wave, Tanaka continued to post more offensive comments, which drew both criticism and support from different social media users.
After facing heavy criticism, he later issued an apology. However, his apology failed to impress social media users, who argued that it was insincere. People argued that he only apologized due to the mounting criticism and calls for him to be expelled from NUST University.
