Trial of AMH Editors Postponed Pending High Court Review
- Southerton Business Times
- 3 days ago
- 2 min read
The trial of Alpha Media Holdings (AMH) and senior editors Kholwani Nyathi and Faith Zaba has been postponed to 25 February 2026 by Harare magistrate Tapiwa Kuhudzai, pending the outcome of a High Court review.
The two editors and the media house face charges of allegedly insulting or undermining President Emmerson Mnangagwa through a satirical Muckraker column titled “When you become a mafia state” published in June 2025.
The defence team, led by lawyers Chris Mhike and Alec Muchadehama, had applied for the charges to be quashed, arguing that they were vague, disclosed no offence at law, and infringed constitutional protections of freedom of expression. However, magistrate Apolonia Marutya ruled last month that the State had adequately outlined the alleged roles of the accused and that disputed issues should be tested during trial.
Marutya rejected the argument that the charges were defective for lacking a specific complainant, holding that the “Office of the President” could be treated as a juristic person. She found that the charges were neither embarrassing nor prejudicial to the accused. Prosecutors allege the article undermined the authority of the president, with Zaba charged for causing publication in her capacity as editor and AMH charged as the publishing entity.
The defence maintains that Muckraker is a satirical opinion column protected under constitutional guarantees of free expression and that the president was not explicitly mentioned in the article. They further argue that investigators misidentified the target of the satire, referencing previous cases in which similar charges against opposition figures were dismissed. Muchadehama has filed for a High Court review of Marutya’s ruling and indicated that, if unsuccessful, the matter could be escalated to the Constitutional Court.
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