{"id":38036,"date":"2023-05-08T13:19:11","date_gmt":"2023-05-08T13:19:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/zimbabwe-prize-winning-novelist-acquitted\/"},"modified":"2023-05-08T13:25:42","modified_gmt":"2023-05-08T13:25:42","slug":"zimbabwe-prize-winning-novelist-acquitted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/zimbabwe-prize-winning-novelist-acquitted\/","title":{"rendered":"Zimbabwe prize-winning novelist acquitted over anti-government protest"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By Nyasha Chingono<\/p>\n<p>HARARE (Reuters) &#8211;     Acclaimed Zimbabwean novelist Tsitsi Dangarembga was acquitted on Monday by the country&#8217;s High Court for staging an anti-government protest in 2020, for which she had initially received a six-month suspended jail sentence and a fine. <\/p>\n<p>Dangarembga was found guilty by a lower court in 2022 on charges of participating in a public gathering with intent to incite public violence while breaking COVID-19 protocols, after a protest criticising the government&#8217;s efforts to deal with corruption and a struggling economy in July 2020. Dozens of political activists were arrested at the time. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I can confirm that she has been acquitted.\u00a0As her lawyers we are grateful because she had not committed any offence in the first place,&#8221; said lawyer Harrison Nkomo. <\/p>\n<p>He said the High Court judges did not immediately give reasons for the acquittal. <\/p>\n<p>A fierce critic of President Emmerson Mnangagwa&#8217;s  government who has been fighting for years against corruption and demanding reforms, Dangarembga had maintained during the trial that Zimbabweans have the right to demonstrate.<\/p>\n<p>Not all protesters were treated with leniency. Zimbabwean courts have handed out a wave of harsh sentences against political activists ahead of general elections later this year. <\/p>\n<p>Opposition leader Jacob Ngarivhume, who was arrested at the same time with Dangarembga for organising protests, was last week sentenced to four years in prison on charges of inciting violence.<\/p>\n<p>Dangarembga&#8217;s first novel, &#8220;Nervous Conditions&#8221;, won the African section of the Commonwealth Writers&#8217; Prize in 1989. Her book &#8220;This Mournable Body&#8221; was nominated for a Booker Prize in 2020. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p \/>\n<p> (Reporting by Nyasha Chingono; Editing by Nellie Peyton and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/zimbabwe-prize-winning-novelist-acquitted\/file-photo-zimbabwean-novelist-tsitsi-dangarembga-speaks-during-an-interview\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportWorldNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ470EQ-VIEWIMAGE.jpg\" alt=\"tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ470EQ-VIEWIMAGE\"><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Nyasha Chingono HARARE (Reuters) &#8211; Acclaimed Zimbabwean novelist Tsitsi Dangarembga was acquitted on Monday by the country&#8217;s High Court for staging an anti-government protest in 2020, for which she had initially received a six-month suspended jail sentence and a fine. Dangarembga was found guilty by a lower court in 2022 on charges of participating [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":38037,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1222],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-u-s-world-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportWorldNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ470EQ-VIEWIMAGE.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38036"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38038,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38036\/revisions\/38038"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}