VOP Radio station boss freed on bail
By Lance Guma
23 December 2005

John Masuku the Director of Voice of the People radio will spend Christmas with his family after he was freed from police detention and granted Z$4 million bail by the courts. He was arrested Monday following a police raid on the station last Thursday which saw the initial arrest of three female journalists, Maria Nyanyiwa, Kundai Mugwanda and Nyasha Bosha. The trio were only released after 5-days in detention.

Masuku was not asked to plead during the court appearance. He is facing charges of violating Section 27 of the Broadcasting Services Act which prohibits the owning or operation of signalling or broadcasting equipment without a licence. Despite the release, Masuku still has to report to Harare Central Police Station every week until his next court appearance on the 13 th of January 2006.

Earlier in the week his lawyer had expressed concerns the police were deliberately dragging their feet over purported investigations into the matter. It was thought by many observers they were trying to hold Masuku over the Christmas period as some form of punishment and message to the media in Zimbabwe. Fortunately for him either the headlines worked or the courts did their job properly this time around.

The defence team says the charges cannot stick on their client because VOP does not own any broadcasting equipment. Instead the radio station sends it’s programming to Radio Netherlands for broadcast into Zimbabwe and hence the government could not seek to regulate the operations of a foreign radio station outside the jurisdiction of its laws. In August 2002 the station had its offices in Milton Park, Harare destroyed by a bomb blast. The perpetrators were never caught.