(MISA/IFEX) – According to MISA, two journalists working for the opposition “Daily Times” have been subpoenaed to testify for the state against Malawi Congress Party (MCP) Member of Parliament for Lilongwe South-East, Hetherwick Ntaba, in a case in which Ntaba is being prosecuted for calling Malawi’s President, Bakili Muluzi, “silly.” The journalists, Mabvoto Banda and […]
(MISA/IFEX) – According to MISA, two journalists working for the opposition
“Daily Times” have been subpoenaed to testify for the state against Malawi
Congress Party (MCP) Member of Parliament for Lilongwe South-East,
Hetherwick Ntaba, in a case in which Ntaba is being prosecuted for calling
Malawi’s President, Bakili Muluzi, “silly.”
The journalists, Mabvoto Banda and Chikumbutso Mtumodzi, received summons
this week from the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, to report
to the High Court of Malawi, Lilongwe Registry on Monday, 25 May 1998, to
testify against Ntaba, whom they quoted as calling Muluzi “silly.”
Ntaba, a former Foreign Affairs Minister in the MCP government and Treasurer
General of the party, was nabbed on 3 May 1998 by about 10 armed policemen,
who also searched his house in the capital, Lilongwe, for allegedly
insulting the president, which is contrary to section 4 of the Protected
Flags, Emblem and Names Act (CAP) 1803 of the Laws of Malawi.
The “Daily Times” 29 December 1997 issue, and its sister paper, the “Malawi
News”, during the subsequent week, quoted Ntaba as calling President Muluzi
silly, and saying: “If Muluzi is a fool, he is a fool.”
A group of plainclothes policemen from the Southern Region Headquarters in
Blantyre stormed the “Daily Times” newsroom to interrogate reporters Banda,
Mtumodzi and Penelope Paliani over the authenticity of the story.
Reacting to the subpoena, MISA-Malawi National Director, Bentry Mndhluli,
condemned the act of using media practitioners as either state or defence
witnesses in any case. “This act will instill fear in the minds of
journalists to freely interview news
sources”, Mndhluli said. He also called on the State to stop building their
cases over stories which appear in newspapers.
