ZIMBABWE’S former president Canaan Banana launched an appeal in the Supreme Court on Monday against his conviction and sentence for sex crimes. Banana was found guilty in December 1998 on several counts of homosexual assault and sodomy, mostly committed while he was president from 1980-1987. He was sentenced to an effective one year in jail and is on bail awaiting the outcome of the appeal. Banana, 64, was not in court while his lawyers argued that the evidence on which he was convicted was unsafe, and that in any case prosecutions for sodomy violated rights to privacy enshrined in the constitution. The former president is in South Africa for medical treatment, his lawyers said.