Zimbabwe Opposition Official Charged With Treason, Lawyers Say

Zimbabwean authorities have charged a senior official of the country’s main opposition party with treason for comments attributed to him in a newspaper report on Monday, according to lawyers in the capital, Harare.

Job Sikhala, the deputy secretary-general of the Movement for Democratic Change, “presented himself to the police this morning and they’ve charged him with attempting to overthrow a constitutionally elected government,” Obey Shava, a lawyer with Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights said in an interview. “He denies the charges, but we are now trying to go to court.”

In a video circulating on social media from the weekend, Job Sikhala and a member of parliament, appear to be seen and heard telling supporters at a rally: “We are going to take the fight to the doorsteps of Emmerson Mnangagwa, we are going to overthrow him before 2023, that is not a joke.”

Sikhala’s lawyer Obey Shava said the outspoken former student leader, who faces up to 20 years in jail if convicted, had been detained at a police station in central Harare and would appear in court on Wednesday. 

Without explicitly confirming the video, Shava told Reuters that there was nothing in its contents to suggest a crime had been committed. “He is denying the charge in its totality,” he said. 

The MDC continues to reject Mnangagwa’s presidential victory last year. Amid widespread economic hardship, the opposition routinely says it will use constitutional means to remove the president, without giving more specifics.