Zimbabwean police on Thursday charged a second journalist from a privately owned weekly with publishing false information in an article alleging a scandal over ballot boxes and papers from last month’s elections, a lawyer said.
Savious Kwinika, a reporter with The Standard, was summoned to Harare’s main police station and charged under Zimbabwe’s tough media and security laws, said the newspaper’s lawyer, Linda Cook.
The Standard‘s editor, Davison Maruziva, was charged on Wednesday in connection with the same article stating that a local official was arrested after ballot boxes and papers were found at his home.
”He has been charged under sections of the Public Order and Security Act and Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act relating to making false statements prejudicial to the state and publishing falsehoods,” Cook said.
”He denied the charges but he has admitted there were inaccuracies in the story. It is now up to the police to proceed with their investigations and hand over the dockets to the attorney general’s office.”
In a lead story headlined ”DA held in elections scandal”, Kwinika claimed the police arrested Nyashadzashe Zindove, the district administrator for Zaka, in southern Zimbabwe after he was found with ballot boxes and ballot papers after the March 31 elections.
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change slammed the elections as a ”massive fraud”, alleging ballot-stuffing on polling day and intimidation leading up to vote.
President Robert Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF party won enough seats to secure a two-thirds majority in Parliament, which will enable the veteran leader to make changes to the Constitution.
The Standard claimed the police also arrested a schoolteacher who was a presiding officer during the polls, after she lost a ballot box in unclear circumstances.
Police have also dismissed the story as false and are demanding a retraction.
Publishing a false story intentionally is an offence under Zimbabwe’s tough media and security laws, attracting a two-year jail term or a fine. — Sapa-AFP