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Zimbabwe: Final Push Actors Fined $25 Billion
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Zimbabwe Standard (Harare)
5 July 2008
Posted to the web 7 July 2008
Sandra Mandizvidza
TWO Harare artists arrested last year over a politically charged play, escaped jail by a whisker last week when a Harare magistrate fined them $25 billion each or four days in prison.
Silvanos Mudzvova and Anthony Tongani were arrested in October last year for breaching sections of the Censorship and Entertainment Control Act when they "unlawfully" performed a political satire, Final Push.
The play depicts Zimbabwe's worsening political and economic crisis. The state argued that the two staged the play without approval from the Censorship Board as required by law.
Giving the sentence, Harare Magistrate Gloria Takundwa said she found the two guilty of Contravening the Censorship and Entertainment Control Act and should pay a fine of $25 billion or spend four days in jail.
Phillip Nyakutombwa of Sawyer and Mkushi legal practitioners represented the two actors. Mudzvova said he was not happy with the judgement as it showed that the Censorship and Entertainment Control Act was there to suppress artists.
"That law was put in place in 1967 by the white colonial regime which wanted to suppress the black man but now it's being used by one black man to oppress another black man; it's not fair," said Mudzvova.
The trial of the two actors opened in May this year with three state witnesses -- the two police officers who arrested them and the secretary to the Censorship Board, Isaac Chiranganyika -- giving testimonies led by the state prosecution team.
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The title of the play is taken from the opposition Movement for Democratic Change party's failed protest march in 2003 against President Robert Mugabe's rule.
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