A Zimbabwean journalist, Faith Zaba, editor of the Zimbabwe Independent, was unable to obtain bail after a power outage disrupted her bail hearing.
Zaba had been arrested on Tuesday for having allegedly insulted Zimbabwean president Emmerson Mnangagwa. Her offence was publishing a piece which has been billed as satire, and which described Mnangagwa as the leader of a mafia state, and the Southern African Development Community as a “club of useless dictators”.
The prosecution did not oppose bail at her Thursday hearing.
The presiding magistrate, Douglas Vakai Chikwekwe, told the court that he was in the process of compiling his ruling, but had been prevented from completing it as the power had been lost.
Journalists face long-standing and ongoing harassment in Zimbabwe, while the country’s economic malaise has meant that life is marked by infrastructural shortcomings.
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