Former Zengeza West MP, Job Sikhala, and Councillor Lovemore Maiko have been found not guilty and acquitted of charges of disorderly conduct by Harare Magistrate Yeukai Dzuda. The two were accused of leading a group of supporters to disrupt a ZANU PF rally and pelting stones at ruling party supporters before the March 2022 by-elections.
However, Magistrate Dzuda ruled that the evidence presented by state witnesses during the trial was inconsistent and filled with contradictions.
Advocate Jeremiah Bamu, the legal representative for Sikhala and Maiko, expressed satisfaction with the ruling, stating that the state’s case had numerous inconsistencies and witness testimonies contradicted each other on important aspects.
Only yesterday, Sikhala was fined $500 by another magistrate after being convicted of communicating falsehoods. He had also received a nine-month suspended sentence, provided he does not commit a similar offence within the next five years. This conviction stemmed from a tweet in which Sikhala claimed that a police officer had fatally struck a baby with a baton in Harare.
Sikhala had been held at Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison since June 2022 for inciting public violence during the funeral wake of CCC activist Moreblessing Ali. However, he was released on January 31, 2024, as his sentence was wholly suspended due to the prolonged period he had spent in pretrial detention.
