In Zimbabwe, Insulting the President Is a Criminal Offense With Jail Time

Zimbabwe's presidential insult law is not a modern invention — it has deep colonial roots. The offense was directly re-enacted from Section 16 of the Public Order and Security Act (POSA) and before that from the repressive Law and Order (Maintenance) Act (LOMA) of 1960, which the white minority Rhodesian colonial regime used to suppress the African liberation struggle. After independence in 1980, successive Zimbabwean governments kept the law and weaponized it similarly. Under Robert Mugabe's nearly four-decade rule, Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) recorded over 200 prosecutions under the insult law. When Emmerson Mnangagwa seized power in a de facto coup in November 2017, pledging a new democratic era, observers quickly noticed that his administration was just as willing — if not more so — to use Section 33. Within months of his inauguration, at least a dozen people had been arrested. Cases have ranged from Facebook posts and WhatsApp forwards to phone calls and shouting in bus terminals. In one notable 2023 case, a man spent nearly a month in jail for allegedly calling Zanu-PF members thieves over the phone. The constitutional picture is murky: Zimbabwe's Supreme Court in 2013 found a related criminal defamation law (Section 96) invalid, and in 2016 the Constitutional Court struck it down entirely — but Section 33, the presidential insult law, survived both rulings and remains fully on the books. Rights groups such as ZLHR have repeatedly called for its repeal, arguing it violates Section 61 of Zimbabwe's own Constitution, which guarantees freedom of expression.