WOZA leaders Jenni Williams and Magodonga Mahlangu appeared again in the Bulawayo Magistrate’s Court before Magistrate Phathekile Msipa on 15 December to hear whether their application for a removal off remand would be considered.

Magistrate Msipa allowed defense lawyer, Kossam Ncube, to apply for the pair to be removed off remand. The state represented by police prosecutor, Lovemore Chifamba, opposed the application.

Mr Ncube argued that it was a curtailment of the duo’s liberty to be kept on remand indefinitely whist awaiting a ruling from the Supreme Court. He also cited a letter received from the registrar of the Supreme Court stating that ‘the matter in the lower court is automatically suspended until a determination of proceedings is made by the Supreme Court’. He argued that the matter was heard in the Supreme Court on 4th June 2009 and the written ruling promised by 7th July but nothing has been forthcoming to date.

In his argument against a removal off remand, state prosecutor, Lovemore Chifamba, argued that one of the cases for trial was a 2004 matter. He claimed that Williams and Mahlangu ‘travel a lot’ and had been impossible to locate for the matter to go to trial, so if removed off remand the state would not be able to summons them to appear in court. He attempted to convince the magistrate that the ruling from the Supreme Court had been promised to the Director of Prosecutions by the end of the year but provided no proof of this undertaking.

Magistrate Msipa will make her ruling of the application for the pair to be removed off remand on Friday 18th December 2009.

Williams and Mahlangu have appeared in court on remand 21 times for these charges since they were arrested on 16 October 2008. The only time they missed their remand hearings was on the first three occasions when they were still in Mlondolozi Prison and the state failed in their duty to present them to court as they had no fuel.