Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) Harare East legislator and lawyer Tendai Biti has called on National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) leader and Constitutional law expert Professor Lovemore Madhuku to apologise to all law students that he lectured.
Recently, Madhuku torched a storm when he suggested that there ought to have been dialogue between CCC leadership and the National Prosecuting Authority after CCC legislators Job Sikhala, Godfrey Sithole and 16 CCC members were on several times denied bail by the courts.
In an interview at Harare Magistrates court, Biti said it IS strange that a legal problem is rectified through a political remedy.
“I think Professor Madhuku must apologise to all the law students that have gone through his hands. The law was created for redress and bail is redress for a lawyer to then suggest there must be political redress of a legal problem is strange.
“However, if he wants to make the case that there should be national dialogue among major political actors in particular champion in chief president Nelson Chamisa and Mr. Emmerson Mnangagwa then that argument and debate should be made separately from the legal issue and the legal discourse pertaining to the bail application of Job Sikhala, Godfrey Sithole and the Nyatsime 16,” said Biti
He said part of the 16 who were arrested were drivers of trucks hired to ferry mourners to the funeral of slain CCC activist Moreblessing Ali.
“Today is the 89th day that Job Sikhala, Godfrey Sithole and the 16 members of the Nyatsime community have been detained we find this regrettable, atrocious. Some of the citizens who were arrested who are part of the Nyatsime 16 are in fact people who were hired to transport people to a funeral, they are hired truck , are drivers of trucks that had been hired to transport mourners.
“The injustice can never be more accentuated, it can never be more clearer so we object to the weaponisation of the law. We object to the law fare, we object to the unjust use of the law and this is what we are experiencing in this case,” he said.
Madhuku feathers when he remarked that Sikhala, Sithole and the Nyatsime 16 can only be freed through negotiations accusing CCC of failing them through arrogance.
“The issues of Job Sikhala and others could have been resolved by a dialogue process.
“The CCC members are now victims of their political party that refuses to dialogue and refuses to be part of POLAD,” Madhuku said.
Sikhala, Sithole and the 16 CCC members are facing charges of inciting violence in Nyatsime following Ali’s death in June.
