Venerated Zimbabwe award winning filmmaker and novelist, Tsitsi Dangarembga has filed for discharge at the close of the State case in which she is being charged for participating in an illegal gathering aimed at causing public violence.
The Nervous Conditions writer is jointly charged alongside Julie Gabriel Barnes and the pair is being legally represented by Chris Mhike.
The duo said the State had failed to prove a case against them, in their joint application.
The trio of Constable Cleopas Chupinga, Assistant Inspectors Donald Chademana and Christian Vungai Makora testified for the State.
According to Dangarembga and Gabriel Barnes, the state witnesses agreed that there was nothing on their placards that could be deemed obscene, threatening, abusive or insulting.
“The witnesses also stated that no violence, breach of peace or bigotry materialised from the actions of the accused, and they failed to illustrate how the act of holding placards with harmless words by two unarmed women could create the potential for violence, breach of peace or bigotry,” partly reads the joint submissions from Dangarembga and Gabriel Barnes.
Added the pair:
“The accused persons have no case to answer to, neither is there any legal basis to detain the accused persons any longer in this trial or to put them to their defence with the hope that somehow the two may incriminate themselves and prop up an otherwise unbelievable story of the State.”
Magistrate Barbara Mateko postponed the matter to June 27 for ruling.
Zwnews
