Zimbabwe's media under siege: editor Faith Zaba released on bail after arrest for satire

Zimbabwe Independent editor Faith Zaba, who had been arrested and detained in the country’s capital on 1 July on allegations of undermining the authority of, or insulting the president, was granted bail on Friday, 4 July, after having been compelled to spend another night in police cells after the magistrate handling the matter said he had failed to type the ruling due to a power cut.

Ordinarily, a magistrate can verbally pronounce their ruling and then have the clerks type it out, but Magistrate Vakayi Chikwekwe stunned many who had gathered at the Harare Magistrates’ Court when he announced his decision on Thursday.

The state had indicated that it was not opposing Zaba’s bail application, following her lawyer’s submission that she was currently of ill health and had been detained after having voluntarily presented herself to the police from a hospital bed where she had been receiving medical attention.

Chikwekwe finally granted Zaba bail of $200 with conditions including that she must report to police once a week, surrender her valid passport, and not interfere with investigations until the matter has been completed, setting 29 July as her next date of appearance in court.

Arrested for insulting the president

The editor of the weekly Zimbabwe Independent newspaper, Zaba is one of a handful of women who hold senior positions in the country’s media sector, which is hobbled by years of cyclic economic problems plus the global advances in information and communication technologies that are presenting problems to legacy media.

Read more: Relief as Zim journalist finally granted bail, but concerns remain over media freedom attacks

She was arrested following the publication of an article in a regular satirical column that has run in her paper for several decades. The state’s outline of the charge against her quotes extensively from the article entitled “When you become a mafia state”, whose contents it alleges “are false in material and designed to engender feelings of hostility by the citizens of Zimbabwe towards the president”.

The insult law, as the law under which Zaba was charged is commonly referred to in Zimbabwe, remains in place in the country, despite President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s pledge to make Zimbabwe more democratic after having first come into power through a coup against long-serving strongman, the late Robert Mugabe. 

No prominent persons have been convicted under the law but dozens of ordinary citizens have been harassed, tortured and arrested for undermining the authority of or insulting the president.

Zaba’s arrest follows the recent arrest of another journalist, Blessed Mhlanga, from the same media company, who spent more than two months in pretrial detention.

‘Journalism is not a crime’

In a press statement, Khanyo Farisè, Amnesty International’s senior researcher in East and Southern Africa, described Zaba’s arrest as an assault on the right to freedom of expression and press freedom. 

“Journalism is not a crime. Authorities must allow journalists to carry out their work freely, safely and without fear of harassment, intimidation or reprisals. The arrest of journalists such as Zaba, and her colleague Blessed Mhlanga, who was arbitrarily detained earlier this year, simply for doing their job, are part of an ongoing pattern in which the criminal justice system is being misused to target independent media voices to instil fear and curb press freedom.

“These tactics pose a significant threat to a free media in Zimbabwe and the public’s right to information. Authorities must end the growing restriction on civic space in the country and allow everyone to freely exercise their human rights,” Farisè said.

Read more: When bail becomes a ‘victory’ – Zimbabwe’s dangerous war on journalism continues

The World Association of News Publishers, or WAN-IFRA, also lent its voice to those condemning Zaba’s arrest.

In a statement issued after Zaba’s arrest, WAN-IFRA Press Freedom executive director Andrew Heslop said rather than arresting journalists and criminalising the profession “Zimbabwean authorities should be doing everything in their power to protect media freedom and the hard-won constitutionally guaranteed rights of the country’s media professionals”. 

“Satire is an essential component of a free press, and public figures – presidents included – should accept that their roles expose them to greater levels of public scrutiny. A strong, healthy democracy should have confidence in holding a mirror to itself and the actions of its leaders. That is a free media’s indispensable role – and Ms Zaba should be immediately freed to continue doing it,” Heslop said.

Zaba is a 2022 WAN-IFRA Women in News Leadership laureate.

Threat to progress

Tabani Moyo, regional director of the Media Institute of Southern Africa, told Daily Maverick that his organisation is worried that “journalism continues to stand in the dock as if it’s a crime to practise a constitutionally provided for duty”.

“We are sending a chilling effect to the media as a country that we must not reflect on and write about societal issues, including satirical commentary on public figures,” he said.

Moyo said Zaba’s arrest dented the progress that he said the country had been steadily witnessing through the repeal of the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act and police media engagement. He said it was “a litmus test on the commitment to far-reaching media policy and regulatory reforms”.

“We remain grateful to our legal team, the moderates whom we have continued to lean on in these corridors of power, for sharing the notion that journalism is not a crime.

“Massive crimes of unimaginable scale in the form of corruption are prevalent in Zimbabwe, and the criminals squandering the national purse remain at large, while journalists are soft targets. We hope that this will give us space to reflect on the media we want to stay hands-on with, and promoting lasting reforms,” Moyo said.

Muthoki Mumo, the Africa programme coordinator with the Committee to Protect Journalists, said her organisation was pleased that Zaba had been granted bail but that she should never have been arrested in the first place. 

“She should never have spent a single moment behind bars. The fact that she was detained is a travesty and a really negative reflection on the state of press freedom and freedom of expression in Zimbabwe,” Mumo said.

Her organisation called for all charges against Zaba to be dropped. DM