ONE of our senior reporters, Blessed Mhlanga, has been summoned by the police’s Law and Order section for allegedly contravening Section 164 of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act, the third such summons in the past three weeks.
The section “focuses on the circulation, broadcast, or distribution of harmful data messages on a computer or information system. This computer system includes email, social media, online articles, websites, databases, digital audio and electronic documents”.
We do not know exactly what he is being accused of.
The first time, Mhlanga was summoned and went to the police accompanied by his lawyer Chris Mhike, where the officers who attended to them said they were checking what became of his case which happened in 2018.
Last Monday as editors from around the country’s mainstream media were meeting with President Emmerson Mnangagwa at State House, gun-toting detectives visited our HStv offices in town looking for him.
On Thursday, more officers were at the offices brandishing guns, again looking for him.
Yesterday, the police upped the ante, releasing a statement that they were looking for him for questioning on some criminal charges.
At the same time, plain-clothed police officers from the same unit visited our group chief executive officer Kenias Mafukidze’s home in Harare and summoned him for questioning, only to be released without charge in the afternoon.
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At the centre of all this fiasco is Zanu PF central committee member Blessed “Bombshell” Geza, whose Press conferences were covered by HStv and NewsDay.
He issued an ultimatum to Mnangagwa: Step down or face serious consequences!
Geza accuses Mnangagwa of presiding over a corrupt government, cronyism, nepotism and a tanking economy, among many others.
It’s the 2017 movie all over again. Just like then, Alpha Media Holdings (AMH), the largest independent media house in the country, is simply providing a platform for Zimbabweans to talk to each other.
The platforms are open to every Zimbabwean, the ED2030 supporters and those against the crusade.
Yes, the police have issued a warrant for the firebrand war veteran. He is a person of interest, but there is no law against interviewing any person, wanted or not.
The prevalence of data has hastened the rise of technology and with that, the rise of Over The Top (OTT) services such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Skype, and many others that allow calls, video or voice, with someone in any part of the world without the interviewee having to reveal their location.
That is why media advocates are describing the charges against Mhlanga and the summoning of Mafukidze as harassment and even bizarre.
The summons and harassment by the authorities betray a sense of panic and show a regime that is used to employing violence as a way of silencing dissenting voices.
AMH is not responsible for raising political temperatures in the country, it is not a political player. The politicians themselves are.
But we remain unmoved, we will always be sticklers of the truth.
Authorities should stop intimidating us in the course of the discharge of our duties.
The second republic has assured us that it will always seek engagement with members of the media and media players when misunderstandings occur.
There are other avenues that the State can use if they are disgruntled.
They have used them before and we resolved whatever the issues were without gut-toting detectives threatening journalists.
Just recently, Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services minister Jenfan Muswere was bragging that no journalist has been arrested since he was appointed to theh portfolio.
Therefore, no journalists should be harassed or intimidated by law enforcement agencies.
