(Last Updated on December 16, 2015 by Editor)
ZIMBABWE – Former war veterans’ leader Jabulani Sibanda, who is accused of criminally insulting President Robert Mugabe, was yesterday remanded to February 29 next year pending the hearing of his constitutional application at the Constitutional Court (ConCourt).
Sibanda is being accused of having made utterances to the effect that “leadership is not sexually transmitted” at the height of the Zanu PF succession battle that saw former Vice-President Joice Mujuru being expelled from the party last December.
The long remand, according to prosecutor Sebastian Mutizirwa, is to allow the ConCourt to dispose of Sibanda’s application in which he argues the charges were meant to stifle his freedom of speech.
The ConCourt is yet to decide on the application that was filed almost a year ago. It is the State’s case that sometime in October last year, Sibanda allegedly said Mugabe and his wife Grace were plotting to do a “bedroom coup” through which they wanted to remove Mujuru from her party and government positions.
The former war veterans’ leader is alleged to have made the utterances at Herbert Mine in Mutasa, Manicaland province, while
addressing war veterans who had come to witness the reburial of liberation war fighters exhumed from the mine shaft.
The State further alleges Sibanda said he was not prepared for the “boardroom coup” because “power was not sexually transmitted”. Sibanda, who is being represented by former Attorney-General Sobuza Gula-Ndebele, is currently out of custody on $400 bail coupled with other bail conditions.