I am ready for jail: Mutasa

via I am ready for jail: Mutasa – NewsDay Zimbabwe July 1, 2015

FORMER Presidential Affairs minister Didymus Mutasa has vowed he was ready to go to jail for spilling Zanu PF secrets after his ouster in December last year.

BY RICHARD CHIDZA

Mutasa has been warned in the State media that he risked arrest for allegedly violating the Official Secrets Act after he revealed that Zanu PF rigged the 2013 harmonised elections.

State media roped in political analysts who said the former Zanu PF secretary for administration was sworn to secrecy when he served in government and cannot divulge them after he was fired.

But Mutasa told NewsDay the government would need to prove its case before a court of law.

“I am not afraid of being arrested as long as they tell me my crime,” he said. “There is also the issue of whether what was reported is what I said. The reporter may have written what they wanted and not what I said. I am a law-abiding citizen and I do not think there is anyone like me. I do not even have a traffic offence.”

The former Zanu PF strongman two weeks ago was quoted saying Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) operatives were deployed in all sectors of the economy to gather sensitive information.

“Of course, you know that some waiters in hotels work for the CIO,” he was quoted as saying. “Your phones are listened to a lot. The CIO is huge and it produces many reports. From the UN (United Nations) there will regularly be a report. A report about the British. Or India. Not very good reports really. I had to read them. They made me tired.”

This, according to “legal experts”, exposed the government’s security apparatus and made it “vulnerable”.

Section 4 of the Official Secrets Act makes it a criminal offence for any person who has in his possession or under his control any secret official code, document or information that has been entrusted in his confidence to him by a person holding an office in the service of the State; or has obtained; or has held office in the service of the State to communicate or publish it to any person.

The offence carries a 20-year jail term and if found guilty, Mutasa, who seemed unfazed, could spend the last years of his life in jail.