Magamba Network, the team behind the satirical Zimbabwean shows Zambezi News and This Week are facing another legal drama after they were summoned to appear in court for allegedly externalising funds.
Magamba was served with the summons on January 7 with a court date set for yesterday, January 17, for allegedly violating the Exchange Control act. This was in connection with payments they had made to a service provider, but when their court date came the charges were dismissed as the state did not have its papers in order.
The state can still proceed with the case and summons can be re-issued if it decides it wants to carry this forward.
The summons came only days after the Magamba TV Project officer, American citizen, Martha O’Donovan, was removed from remand and had her bail conditions lifted during a court appearance on January 4. O’Donovan’s court appearance was part of a saga that began in the early hours of Friday, November 3, 2017, when she was arrested by police officers who stormed her home at in Harare.
She faced charges of subversion and of undermining the authority of the then president, Robert Mugabe, after she allegedly anonymously tweeted a picture which implied Mugabe used a catheter. The picture was captioned, “We are being led by a sick and selfish man.”
A few days after she was arrested, the police raided the Magamba offices, located at Moto Republik, a creative hub which the organisation runs. The police confiscated laptops and other equipment which are still to be returned.
All this came at the tail end of a legal battle which lasted for most of 2017 where Magamba fought to stop the Harare City Council from demolishing parts of the hub that had been constructed with containers. The City Council argued that the containers had been put up without approval but Magamba had the paperwork to prove that they had gone through all the necessary processes.
Magamba Network also runs Open Parly Zim, a project to make parliamentary proceedings more accessible to the public and the annual Shoko Festival.
