MDC activist refuses to pay fine over anti Mugabe song
By Violet Gonda
3 August 2007

Lloyd Mahute the provincial youth secretary for the Tsvangirai MDC is spending another night in police custody after he refused to pay an admission of guilt fine. The opposition party claims Mahute and seven other MDC activists were arrested on Thursday for singing songs ridiculing and mocking Robert Mugabe. The party’s spokesperson for Manicaland province, Pishai Muchauraya, said the other seven were released late Thursday and charged with public nuisance.

He said they were forced to “buy their freedom because Zimbabwean prisons are like hell-holes.” They paid admission of guilt fines of Z$40 000 each.

But it’s reported the provincial youth secretary refused to pay his fine preferring to get his day in court. The police in Mutare refused to talk to us but Muchauraya told us Mahute was thoroughly beaten by a Chief Inspector Innocent Rigomeka of Chisamba Police Station and had been isolated from the other activists when they were arrested on Thursday.

The eight activists were arrested after they had attended a remand hearing at the Mutare magistrate’s court for a separate case. Previously they had been arrested on the 12th March after they attempted to hold a protest demanding the release of opposition and civic leaders who had been arrested the day before.