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Nobleman Runyanga Correspondent

CCC deputy national chairman and Zengeza West legislator, Job Sikhala has been in remand prison since 14 June 2022. 

Sikhala was arrested for inciting the mindless arson, violence and vandalism which rocked the Nyatsime area of Chitungwiza following the gruesome murder of a resident, Moreblessing Ali, whom the CCC claimed to be its member. 

Since then, a lot of dust has been raised by various people over the matter. The opposition and its sidekicks in the civil society sector are accusing Government of interfering in the judicial due process to prolong Sikhala’s stay in prison. 

Others are already claiming that because of Sikhala’s long stay in prison, he has become a hero of the mould former South African President, the late Nelson Mandela proportions. He is now being regarded as a political prisoner. 

Other members of the opposition and sympathisers baselessly claiming that Sikhala’s imprisonment is meant to drive fear in other daring opposition activists ahead of next year’s general elections but nothing is further from the truth. 

Sikhala has a track record of criminality which is traceable back to his days as a student at the University of Zimbabwe in the 1990s. 

The victim of State interference in the Judiciary fallacy

The opposition and other like-minded organisations and individuals have been arguing that bail is a constitutionally-guaranteed right which Sikhala should enjoy like any other suspect. But Sikhala is no common suspect. 

They have been using the fact that Sikhala through his lawyers has applied for and denied bail many times to support their strange and baseless claims of alleged interference in the Judiciary by the Executive. 

They have gone on to buttress their strange speculation by claiming that former High Court Judge, Erica Ndewere, who was discharged from the bench in September 2021 after a tribunal chaired by retired Judge Justice Simbi Mubako found her unsuitable to continue holding office, had been fired for granting bail to Sikhala in 2020.

If Ndewere was unfairly dismissed for “favouring” an opposition politician by granting him bail as they claim, why was High Court Judge, Tawanda Chitapi who granted him bail in January 2021 not also dismissed? 

When the Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, Ziyambi Ziyambi commented last week that Sikhala had created his legal woes by disregarding conditions of the bail granted in his previous cases, people such as self-exiled, fugitive from Zimbabwean law and CCC activist, Makomborero Haruzivishe excitedly claimed that the Minister’s views constituted interference in the Judiciary by the Executive. Nothing was further from the truth. 

The Minister is part of the Executive yes, but he did not tell the Judiciary how to handle Sikhala’s case. The Minister is a Zimbabwean citizen who is entitled to an opinion on any matter. 

Minister Ziyambi is a lawyer and a senior Government official. He knows what constitutes interference in the operations of the Judiciary and what does not – and would not wilfully do the wrong thing. 

For the record, the whole world knows that the Zimbabwean Government upholds the sacrosanct principle of separation of powers. 

Sikhala is a very bad bail candidate

Minister Ziyambi was right. Sikhala is just a violent criminal as his chequered record shows.

Those fighting in his corner have been using the fact that he has been denied bail 10 times since his arrest in June to whip the people’s emotions against Government. His legal team from the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR), which is funded by the West, continues to lodge bail applications against the background CCC’s claims of “a captured Judiciary”. 

The lawyers’ plan is to use the applications tally to appeal for sympathy from Western capitals and whip public opinion against Government. 

Paradoxically, the effect has been that members of the public are questioning the lawyers’ mettle. No lawyer worth his salt would continue applying for bail for a suspect with a record for trashing previous bail conditions unless he has become a political activist garbed in a lawyer’s robe.

The world should know that Sikhala is not only about the tallies of his previous arrests and bail applications. He is about his record in Zimbabwe’s courts of law. 

Most of those who sympathise with Sikhala do so on the basis of the emotive opinions and statements from opposition activists like Hopewell Chin’ono, Haruzivishe or Jacob Ngarivhume. This is because they are not prepared to come to terms with Sikhala’s ugly record. 

For the record, Sikhala has four cases pending before the courts of law. In first case, Sikhala is facing charges of inciting public violence arising from his campaign in which he urged people to participate in the public demonstrations which Ngarivhume was planning for July 31 2020, under his July 31st Movement. 

A video which went viral showed Sikhala thanking people who had brought him food in a bush where he was hiding. He said that he was preparing for the planned protests. 

He was granted bail by Ndewere on condition that he would not post videos or audios on social media with content that would likely incite violence. 

Additionally, he was barred from addressing meetings whose message could incite public violence. 

The second case arose when Sikhala used social media to communicate falsehoods which are prejudicial to the State when he claimed that a policeman had accidentally killed a baby strapped on her mother’s back while dispersing Bindura-bound people who here hitch-hiking on a prohibited stretch of Sam Nujoma Street in Harare’s Avenues area in January 2021. He was granted bail by Justice Chitapi. 

Sikhala’s third case emanates from his public and social media utterances in the wake of the death of Ali, in May. During Ali’s funeral wake, Sikhala urged Zimbabweans to avenge Ali’s death. This resulted in the orgy of arson, violence and vandalism against mostly Zanu PF members, which engulfed the Nyatsime area of Chitungwiza where Ali stayed. Sikhala and CCC Chitungwiza North legislator, Godfrey Sithole provided transport for the thugs who attacked Zanu PF members and ordinary residents of Nyatsime. 

The Zengeza West legislator is also facing charges of obstructing or defeating the course of justice. Between May 25 and June 16, 2022, Sikhala recorded and circulated a video clip in which he intended to mislead the police officers investigating Ali’s murder. 

Sikhala used the video to accuse Zanu PF supporters of kidnapping and murdering Ali. In view of this background, no judicial officer in is right frame of mind anywhere in the world would grant Sikhala bail, however, the number of applications he lodges with the courts. 

Sikhala is just a bad candidate for bail. 

In view of the litany of crimes he is facing and his record for disregarding bail conditions, it is crystal clear that Sikhala is not a prisoner of conscience, a euphemism for political prisoner, as his party members are desperately trying to convince the world. 

The attention-seeking Sikhala is no Mandela

Members of the Biti faction in the CCC have sought to use Sikhala’s self-authored plight to create a hero out of him. They have even likened him to revered African heroes like the late former South African President, Nelson Mandela. However, most people will not have wool pulled over their eyes by a desperate opposition. 

Sikhala is no one’s hero except, of course, for his hanger-on and greenhorn lawyer, Freddy Michael Masarirevu, who is desperately trying to be a latter day George Bezos to the attention-seeking politician. The Mandelas, Mugabes, Machels and Nkrumahs of this continent never supported the sanctioning of their own people by Western powers for political expediency as Sikhala and ilk do. Mandela earned his global hero status by fighting for his own people’s self-determination and not reversing the gains of independence as Sikhala and company do. 

Others have resurrected Sikhala’s college days moniker, Wiwa which was derived from the late Nigerian writer and environmental activist, Kenule Beeson “Ken” Saro-Wiwa, who was executed by the Nigerian Government in November 1995 for leading the Ogoni people’s resistance to the extraction of petroleum in their Ogoniland area. 

Saro-Wiwa was executed at the time that Sikhala was at the University of Zimbabwe where everyone knew him not for academic exploits, but for seeking fame through unjustified protests. Sikhala is in the sorry space he is in because he has failed to outgrow the student activism phase of his life. His default response to any issue is violent lawlessness. 

It is, therefore, a gross insult to the late Saro-Wiwa and his family for anyone to liken him to the Nigerian hero of the Ogoni people. Sikhala is just a common and violent criminal who has been representing the people of St Mary’s and Zengeza West by accident since his party thrives on anarchy and mayhem, for which he is known. Given his chequered record, he would not be suitable even for a village burial society position anywhere in the world. 

No right is absolute 

While bail for arrested suspects is provided for as a right in Section (1) (d) of the Constitution, it should be noted that no right is absolute. The portion of the national charter says that those who are arrested on suspicion of committing crimes should be released pending trial or charge “unless there are compelling reasons justifying their continued detention.”

Sikhala’s habit of violating bail conditions in the name of fighting Zanu PF and in search of fame within his party is his undoing. 

It is the compelling reason why he remains in Chikurubi Prison pending trial for his four cases. 

Those who have been making claims that Sikhala is being victimised because he is an opposition politician should know that justice and the facts at hand know no political affiliation. They should, for their own good, embrace the inconvenient reality that bail is not granted on the basis of the number of times one applies for it. 

They should disabuse themselves of the shameless lie that Sikhala is a political prisoner because he is a CCC member. Is Sithole, who is out on bail, not a CCC member?