Tanaka Ryan Ziso, a final-year Civil and Water Engineering student at NUST, is going to spend the Easter holidays behind bars after he was dragged to court on Thursday.
According to The Chronicle, Tanaka Ziso appeared before Bulawayo Magistrate Maxwell Ncube to answer for charges of causing offence to persons of a particular race. He was remanded in custody until 2 April 2024.
In Zimbabwe, causing offense to persons of a particular race, religion, etc. is addressed under the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act. Specifically, Section 42 of the act deals with this offence.
It prohibits actions that intentionally cause offense to individuals based on their race, religion, or other protected characteristics. The section reads as follows:
42. Causing offence to persons of a particular race, religion, etc.
(1) In this section-
“creed or religion” means any system of beliefs associated with practices of worship that is adhered to by any significant body of persons in Zimbabwe or any other country;
“film”, “picture”, “publication”, “record” and “statue” have the meanings assigned to those terms by section 2 of the Censorship and Entertainments Control Act [Chapter 10:04]; “publicly”, in relation to making a statement, means—
(a) making the statement in a public place or any place to which the public or any section of the public have access;
(b) publishing it in any printed or electronic medium for reception by the public;
“statement” includes any act, gesture or form of expression, whether verbal, written or visual, but does not include any film, picture, publication, statue or record that is of a bona fide literary or artistic character.
(2) Any person who publicly makes any insulting or otherwise grossly provocative statement that causes offence to persons of a particular race, tribe, place of origin, colour, creed or religion, intending to cause such offence or realising there is a real risk or possibility of doing so, shall be guilty of causing offence to persons of a particular race, tribe, place of origin, colour, creed or religion, as the case may be, and liable to a fine not exceeding level six or imprisonment for a period not exceeding one year or both.
“The way MaNdevere claim they’re not Zimbabweans is top tier man😂, woenda kuSouth Africa vokuramba, wopiswa ikoko futi.
I wish I could live with those kind of brains, no real thinking, no straining your brains. Just an idiot saying Vele 25 times a day. Freestyle kinda lifeðŸ˜,” reads the tweet he posted.
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