Court frees Gwanda vendors for calling police officers corrupt

Gwanda magistrate Sheila Nyazombe on Tuesday acquitted two Gwanda vendors who had a feud with the police officers after calling them corrupt and deserving to be fired.

The two Leonard Ndlovu and Oscar Zhou appeared in court charged with fabricated charges that they interfered with police in carrying our their duties.

In a carefully built up story which witnesses brought by the police could not substantiate, two of the police officers who also made themselves witnesses contradicted heavily even with the witness who they claimed was the person behind the obstruction of justice charges.

Delivering judgement, the magistrate castigated  the police for unnecessarily using their powers to arrest innocent citizens and creating charges for them.

Nqobani Nyathi from Phulu Ncube legal practitioners who represented the two on behalf of Abammeli Human Rights Lawyers asked the magistrate to throw away the charges against the two as the state had failed to prove any case against the two.

Speaking to media at the close of the case chairman of the Restoration Of Human Rights Matabeleland South chapter Mr Bekezela Maduma Fuzwayo said that the judgement delivered by the magistrate should be a applauded and taken as a warning to the police against wantonly arresting innocent citizens who clash with them in their personal capacities.

Fuzwayo whose organisation facilitated for the legal representation of the two further castigated the police for wasting state resources to fight their own battles and also wasting the court's time which is battling with a backlog of cases to look into.

"This was just a waste of state resources and the court's time by the police," he said.

"It's a clear case that the police just wanted to vent their anger on the innocent vendors who demanded that they do their duties with diligence and shun corruption which is a genuine call by all Zimbabweans the President himself included," he added.