22 August: High Court, Salisbury Three members of Bishop Muzorewa's UANC, TINAYI MUNENGA CHIRIMARARA, RICHARD VERE and DOUGLAS MAROWA, were found not guilty of encouraging seven members of the UANC youth wing (including 2 girls) to go for guerillas training, and were acquitted. The accused maintained that they had sent the seven members to Mrewa to organise for a UANC rally planned to be held in Highfield on 19 March. The youths had been taken off a bus by guerillas and held captive for three days. They were subsequently arrested by security forces and, according to two of the youths, beaten up by security forces and police at Mrewa to force them to admit to having been "recruited".
23 August: High Court, Salisbury An unnamed 17 year old African labourer from Charmwood Farm, Centenary, was found not guilty of the murder of his employer, Mr. T.F. Koen, and of two alternative charges of assisting guerillas and failing to report them to the police. He was acquitted. The court heard that guerillas had visited the farm and addressed the workforce on several occasions before Mr. Koen's death in February. The workers had all been arrested and taken to Centenary CID and later Bindura for interrogation.
24 August: Regional Court Salisbury The case of nine youths and one man, MUTZANGWA WHIZA, charged with delivering Whiza's son, a district assistant over to a group of guerillas in the Mrewa area, was further remanded until 1 November to enable defence to be arranged.
13 September: High Court, Salisbury An unnamed man pleaded not guilty to possessing arms of war near Nyamuzuwe Mission, Mtoko, in September 1977. He was injured and captured in a contact with security forces, and told the court that following his trial, he had expected to "be attached to the security forces so that I would help them".
Mid-September: Bulawayo Magistrate's Court GABULLAH MUZOMBE (20) was acquitted of attempting or conspiring to leave the country for guerilla training.
(At least 39 other people charged under the Law and Order (Maintenance) Act are known to have been acquitted over the period May-September, or had the charges against them withdrawn).
APPEALS MANDINAISE MAKARUTSE (46) and his wife MARIA (38), who were each sentenced to 4 years imprisonment (3 suspended) in April 1978 for failing to report a guerilla, were given wholly suspended 2 year terms on appeal on 20 June.
A 5 year sentence imposed on PETER ZISHIRI, the manager of a shoe company in Fort Victoria, for failing to report guerillas, was reduced to 2 years (suspended) in August.
WAIROSI JAIROSI MWATURURA, a "boss-boy" at the Rhodesia Wattle Company's Nyakuping Estate in Chipinga (a subsidiary of the Lonrho group), had a 9 year prison sentence reduced to 5 years. A white employee, Mr. Williams, had been killed by guerillas while driving around the estate on 16 January.
The political trials recorded in FOCUS involve charges under the Law and Order (Maintenance) Act in virtually all cases. As the war has escalated, however, it has become clear that many defendants appearing before the courts on ostensibly criminal charges have in fact been arrested because of their involvement in and support for the armed liberation struggle. This is so in many instances of stock theft, for example, an offence which since April 1976 has carried a mandatory prison sentence of at least 9 years, and which has since become extremely widespread. Charges of stock theft in recent months have been accompanied by allegations of feeding and assisting guerillas.
In other cases, Rhodesian press reports suggest political connotations but are too scanty for firm conclusions to be drawn. In June 1978, for example, 25 young men from the Chilimanzi area were each sentenced to 3 years' imprisonment (one suspended) by the Salisbury High Court for destroying a diptank and setting fire to an engine at a clinic. The regime's Attorney General, Mr. Brendan Treacy, has confirmed that "the courts are under tremendous pressure due to so many cases resulting from the security situation." The system has got so stretched that in July, the former Chief Justice Sir Hugh Beadle and a retired High Court judge Mr. Justice Jarvis were temporarily reappointed as acting judges of the High Court because of a backlog of work in criminal cases.
According to a report in the Rhodesia Herald (now renamed The Herald) 27 of the 119 cases brought before the Salisbury High Court over the first seven months of 1978 involved charges under the Law and Order (Maintenance) Act. The total number of law and order cases throughout the country in magistrate's, regional and High courts over the same period was 269. However, there were also an increasing number of common law prosecutions of robbery and murder connected with the security situation. At an inquest in Karoi in June, for example, the police revealed that in the previous six months there had been 105 cases of storebreaking by "terrorists and pseudo-terrorists" in the area, and only 40 by "ordinary criminals". Matters had reached such a critical stage that local people had resorted to placing explosive devices inside their stores to deter store-breakers.
