Police in Zimbabwe on Monday on charged the spokesperson of the country’s main opposition party with trying to overthrow President Robert Mugabe’s government.
Paul Themba Nyathi, spokesperson of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) is accused of being part of a group of opposition officials who “wanted to overthrow the constitutional government and coerce the president to step down,” lawyer Nicholas Mathonsi said by telephone from the southern city of Bulawayo.
Nyathi was charged under a section of the country’s security law for allegedly urging supporters to take part in a job stayaway in March, Mathonsi said.
On March 18 and 19 this year the MDC organised a widely-followed national job stayaway to press the government to take urgent steps to resolve the country’s economic and political crises.
If found guilty of trying to overthrow a constitutional government Nyathi could face 20 years in prison. But Mathonsi described the charges against the official as “spurious”.
“I don’t see how they can prove those allegations. They don’t have a shred of evidence,” he said.
Two weeks after the March stayaway MDC vice president Gibson Sibanda was arrested in Bulawayo and similarly charged.
Mathonsi said Nyathi was on Monday told to appear in a Bulawayo court on October 29 to face charges under the Public Order and Security Act (Posa). – AFP