MDC Alliance spokesperson Fadzayi Mahere has been arrested and charged with 'publishing or communicating false statements prejudicial to the state' for posting widely circulated video which purported to show a baby killed by a policeman's baton stick while strapped to its mother.
The arrest comes after Mahere tweeted that police had beaten an infant to death while enforcing Covid-19 lockdown rules this week.
Police later said the information was false.
Mahere is the third person to be arrested for publishing or communicating false statements prejudicial to the state' for posting widely circulated video after Zimbabwe journalist Hopewell Chin'ono and MDC Alliance lawmaker Job Sikhala.
Chin'ono was the first to be arrested for circulating the video in question.
Hopewell Chin'ono spent the weekend in prison after he was arrested by police Friday and charged with publishing or communicating falsehoods while Job Sikhala was arrested on Saturday on same charges & spent the weekend detained at Harare Central Police Station.
The tweets that put Mahere in trouble with Zimbabwe police:
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Zanu PF Director for Information and Publicity Tafadzwa Mugwadi has continued waging a war against SABC foreign correspondent Sophie Mokoena who he says is parading fake news.
Mugwadi has been engaged in a war with Mokoena who he accuses of undermining President Mnangagwa and even threatened to publish a bombshell about the ANC trip to Zimbabwe if the ANC doesn’t reign in Mokoena.
Mugwadi used microblogging site Twitter and praised ZRP for arresting MDC Spokesperson Fadzayi Mahere for allegedly tweeting falsehoods and said:
Zim has been a victim of a #FakeNews warfare by rogue puppets in newsrooms like @Sophie_Mokoena
The entirety of hostility on Zim is a product of the @SABCNews
It Must Fall. Hats of to @PoliceZimbabwefor detaining @SABCNews fake news correspondent in Zim @advocatemahere
Mugwadi was thrown under the bus by Zanu PF which stated that his utterances do not represent the position of the party. He refused to apologize and said his conscience is clear.
Mugwadi was asked by the NewsHawks to shed light on the bombshell on the ANC he was talking about and he said the ANC delegation to Zimbabwe wanted to stage a coup to topple Ramaphosa from power.
